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THE   ENGLISH    NOVEL 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

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http://www.archive.org/details/englishnovelstudOOIanirich 


THE 


ENGLISH    NOVEL 


A  STUDY  IN 


C|)e  SDelielopment  of  personality 


BY 
SIDNEY  LANIER 

LECTURER   IN  JOHNS   HOPKINS   UNIVERSITY 
AUTHOR  OF    "the  SCIENCE  OF   ENGLISH   VERSE" 

^:X)>\v/o  3.  A^  o  R  <s  A /s/ 


REVISED  EDITION 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 

1914 


Copyright,  188S,  1897, 
By  Charles  Scribner's  Sons. 

Copyright,  1911, 
By  Mary  D.  Lanier. 


Prefatory   Note 


The  Johns  Hopkins  lectures  delivered  in  Hop- 
kins Hall  during  the  winter  of  1881,  and  published 
in  1883  under  title  of  The  English  Novell  were  Mr. 
Lanier's  latest  literary  work  excepting  his  Introduc- 
tion to  The  Boy's  Mabinogiony  which  was  dictated  at 
intervals  in  May  and  June,  1881,  in  the  Carohna 
mountains.  Their  original  plan  called  for  twenty 
lectures ;  but  Mr.  Lanier  was  at  the  last  persuaded 
to  reduce  the  number  to  twelve,  as  President  Gil- 
man,  with  solicitude  aroused  by  the  writer's  rapid 
decline,  made  use  of  the  suggestion  that  a  shorter 
course  would  better  fit  in  with  the  whole  schedule 
of  University  lectures.  To  effect  this  change  the 
entire  omission  of  many  subjects  and  briefer  treat- 
ment of  others  became  necessary,  while  George 
Eliot's  death  occurring  in  the  middle  of  the  course 
further  modified  the  plan  by  urging  Mr.  Lanier 
to  concentrate  upon  her  work  the  remaining  six 
lectures. 

His  own  name  for  the  course  was  "  From 
iEschylus  to  George  Eliot,  The  Development  of 
Personality,"  and  this  better  conveys  the  author's 
purpose  than  the  compacter  book-title,  since  the 
novel  was  preferred  for  study  above  other  literary 
forms    merely   as    the    fullest  exponent  of  man's 

ivi564.5a6 


vi  Prefatory  Note 

growth  in  the  sense  of  personality,  contrasted  with 
its  faint  and  crude  expression  in  the  ^schylean 
drama.  The  original  title  was  discarded  as  too 
cumbrous,  and  after  thirteen  years  of  circulation 
the  only  practicable  change  is  thought  to  be  a 
clearer  statement  in  a  new  sub-title. 

Immediate  publication  of  these  lectures  was 
urged  in  1882  by  some  who  had  listened  to  them 
and  who  believed  that  they  would  require  only 
careful  proof-reading.  At  this  time  Mr.  Lanier's 
only  companion  in  their  preparation  was  disabled 
by  illness  from  taking  any  part  whatever  in  the 
editing;  so  an  unrevised  first  draught  of  a  work 
shaped  and  penned  —  or  sometimes  dictated  — 
under  the  weight  of  a  mortal  malady  was  com- 
mitted to  the  generous  care  of  a  friend  who  was 
forbidden  to  lay  any  questions  before  the  present 
editor.  Many  mistakes  resulted :  some  from  the 
copyist's  unfamiliarity  with  the  feeble  handwriting, 
and  others  from  the  former  editor's  uncertainty 
regarding  Mr.  Lanier's  final  wish  at  various  points. 
New  plates  have  permitted  a  thorough  revision, 
the  addition  of  a  table  of  contents  and  the  restora- 
tion of  several  omitted  passages.  In  addition,  some 
verbal  repetitions  are  suppressed  and  consistency 
in  external  forms  has  been  sought. 

One  slight  alteration  the  present  editor  has  made 
with  reluctance,  upon  the  assurance  that  a  liberty 
which  the  author  deliberately  claimed  the  right  to 
exercise  would  be  mistaken  for  unscholarly  care- 
lessness :  that  is,  the  interchangeable  use  of  will 
and  shall  as  they  repeatedly  appear  in  his  writings. 


Prefatory  Note  vii 

He  must  therefore  be  put  upon  record  according 
to  his  parenthesis  "  (Observe  will  and  shall  here)  " 
that  follows  the  quotation  from  Sir  Thomas  Malory 
on  p.  21.  He  has  defined  this  attitude  in  a  frag- 
mentary note  headed  "  Will  and  Shall,"  where  he 
says: 

"  Who  can  assume  authority  on  the  proper  use 
of  will  and  shall^  when  the  Wycliffite  scriptures 
have  *  I  schal  ryse '  and  '  I  schal  go  to  my  fadir ' 
and  '  I  schal  seie  to  him,'  while  the  modern  version 
has  *  I  will  arise '  and  '  I  will  say,'  etc.  ?  " 

So  much  discretion  may  fall  within  the  limits  of 
a  duty  attempted  in  this  revision :  to  preserve  the 
author's  own  well-developed  sense  of  personality  in 
its  utmost  freedom  of  expression,  and  to  give  to 
his  readers  the  fullest  opportunity  of  studying  that 
rare  personality  as  it  is  here  revealed. 

M.  D.  L. 

January^  1897. 


Prefatory  Note  to  the  First  Edition. 

The  following  chapters  were  originally  delivered 
as  public  lectures  at  John  Hopkins  University,  in 
the  winter  and  spring  of  i88i.  Had  Mr.  Lanier 
lived  to  prepare  them  for  the  press  he  would  prob- 
ably have  recast  them  to  some  extent;  but  the 
present  editor  has  not  felt  free  to  make  any 
changes  from  the  original  manuscript,  beyond  the 
omission  of  a  few  local  and  occasional  allusions, 
and  the  curtailment  of  several  long  extracts  from 
well  known  writers. 

Although  each  is  complete  in  itself,  this  work 
and  its  foregoer,  The  Science  of  English  Verse^ 
were  intended  to  be  parts  of  a  comprehensive 
philosophy  of  formal  and  substantial  beauty,  which, 
unhappily,  the  author  did  not  live  to  develop. 

W.  H.  B. 


Table  of  Contents 


I 

PAGE 

Purpose  of  these  Lectures i 

Forms  of  Expression  in  Prose 2 

Recent  Origin  and  Great  Popularity  of  the  Novel     ....  3 

Four  Lines  of  Development  to  be  studied 4 

1.  Growth  in  the  Personality  of  Man 5 

2.  Simultaneous  Rise  of  Music,  Science,  and  the  Novel     .  9 

3.  Increase  of  Personality  has   required  more  Complex 

Forms  of  Expression 10 

4.  Illustration  by  Extracts  from  Novels 10 

English  Prose  developed  much  later  than  English  Poetry      .  1 1 

Chaucer's  Parson's  Tale 13 

And  Meliboeus 16 

The  Six  Wise  Masters*  Speech  of  Tribulation 19 

Malory's  Morte  d'' Arthur 20 

Monotony  of  Early  Prose 21 

Physiological  Basis  of  Rhythm 23 


II 

^  Development  of  Prose  Rhythm 25 

Prose  has  more  Forms  than  Poetry 27 

Science  and  Art  commonly  confounded 28 

Zola's  Theory  of  Scientific  Fiction 28 

True  Relations  of  Science,  Art,  Religion,  and  Life    ....  30 

From  Formlessness  to  Form  is  the  Law 30 

Illustration  from  the  Science  of  Music 31 

Misconception  concerning  the  Science  of  English  Verse  •     •     •  33 

Fallacy  that  Ignorance  helps  Spontaneity 34 

Art  is  Selective 36 

Shakspere's  Careful  Art 37 

Science  and  Poetry  have  grown  side  by  side 38 

Tennyson  shows  how  the  Poet  treats  Science 39 


xii  Table  of  Contents 

PAGE 

Fallacy  that  Poetry  will  be  Democratic  and  Formless    ...    45 

Whitman's  Real  Value 45 

Wordsworth  and  Whitman  not  Democratic 46 


III 

Summary  of  Preceding  Lecture 48 

How  Science  should  help  the  Poet 49 

Whitman's  Specious  Democracy 50 

True  Democracy  depends  on  Character,  not  on  Muscle      .    .  56 

Carlyle  on  Poetic  Beauty 59 

Freedom  not  reached  through  Formlessness 60 

Beethoven  and  Epictetus  illustrate  the  Connection  between 

Art  and  Freedom 61 

Whitman  a  Dandy  in  Disguise 63 

Zola's  Theory  of  Fiction 6$ 

His  Misconception  of  Science 69 

The  Experimental  Novel  impossible 71 

Science  is  Analytic,  Art  is  Synthetic 72 

The  True  Novelist  is  Scientific  and  Poetic 73 

Romantic,  Realistic,  and  Naturalistic  Fiction 73 


IV 

Is  the  Growth  in  Personality  the  Great  Fact  ? 78 

Life  teaches  us  to  know  ourselves 79 

Analysis  of  ^Eschylus's  Prometheus  Bound 81 

Feeble  Sense  of  Personality  displayed 89 

Chaucer's  Description  of  the  Golden  Age 92 

Prometheus  Bound  emphasizes  Physical  Pain 95 

Modern,  Spiritual  Pain  illustrated  by  Keats 95 


V 

Shelley's  Prometheus  Unbound 98 

Shelley's  Immaturity 102 

Specimens  of  his  Excellence 106 

Bayard  Taylor's  Prince  Deukalion 109 

Plato's  Republic  shows  Lack  of  Sense  of  Personality  .    .    .  116 


Table  of  Contents  xiii 

PAGE 

Plato  and  Zola  reach  Similar  Results 1 19 

Plato  and  Whitman 121 


VI 

Greek  Science  as  illustrated  by  Plato 127 

Aristotle's  Lack  of  Intellectual  Conscience 130 

Plato  on  Immortality 133 

Love  of  Truth  a  Modern  Characteristic 138 

Modern  Science  Dates  from  Newton 139 

English  Science  in  Pepys's  Time 142 

Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy 143  ^ 

Music  among  the  Greeks 145 

Absence  of  Harmony 148 

Slow  Development  of  Music .  148 

With  Bach  and  Handel  Modern  Music  begins 149 

Modem  English  Novel  begins  with  Richardson 151 


VII 

Personality  develops  in  Three  Directions    .......  152 

The  Spiritual  Significance  of  Music 153 

-George  Eliot  represents  Modern  Personality 155  ♦-^ 

Her  First  Work,  Amos  Barton 157        * 

Scenes  of  Clerical  Life 160 

Adam  Bede 163 

George  Eliot's  Early  Life 164 

Comparison  of  Milly  Barton  with  Prometheus 172 

Love  is  the  Modern  Watchword 173 


VIII 

^  ^Uiistorical  Retrospect  of  English  Fiction 175 

Richardson's  Pamela 176 

Y\e\dmg*s  Joseph  Andrews 181 

Richardson's  Clarissa  Harlowe 183 

Yx^Xdxn^s,  Jonathan  Wild  and  Tom  Jones 184 

Smollett 185 

Sterne 186 


xiv  Table  of  Contents 

PAGE 

Purpose  of  these  Eighteenth  Century  Novelists  .    .    .    .    .  187 

Goldsmith's  Vicar  of  Wakefield 189 

TidiXvAn^s  Loves  0/ the  Plants 191 

Scott  and  his  Contemporaries 194 

Victorian  Writers 194 

^-~-  ■Bulwer  and  Dickens 195 

i:*.*cr  Thackeray 196 

"C?'^ew  Mission  exemplified  by  George  Eliot 197 

Emerson  and  Carlyle  on  Social  Inequality 199 

.*»-::George  Eliot  on  Everyday  Life 199 


IX 

Adam  Bede 202 

^p*  Influence  of  Didactic  Fiction  illustrated  by  Dickens     .    .    .  204 

Immorality  of  Richardson  and  Fielding 204 

IJ/C^eorge  Eliot  both  Synthetic  and  Analytic 206 

5^^as  Greater  Tolerance  than  Dickens 206 

i^iler  Reverence  for  the  Past 207 

^4ler  Use  of  Scientific  Terms 208 

^^ Dickens's  Satire  on  "The  Good  Old  Times" 210 

^>-Thackeray's  Method  illustrated  by  the  Daily  Newspaper      .  211 

I  His  One-sided  View  of  Life 212 

I    His  Lack  of  Appreciation 214 

l^ontrast  between  George  Eliot's  and  Dickens's  Methods      .  215 

Janefs  Repentance 216 

Shakspere  has  described  no  Repentance 218 

^;7fTeorge  Eliot  Recognizes  the  Complexity  of  Personality  .    .  220 

Lack  of  Personal  Details  in  the  Gospels 221 

Animals  as  described  by  George  Eliot  and  Dickens      ...  221 

Carlyle's  Lesson  from  a  Hen 223 

^^^Womanhood  in  Victorian  Literature 225 


X 

yT^he  Mill  on  the  Floss 227 

^''Enormous  Advance  from  yEschylus  to  George  Eliot    .    .    .  228 

^^^imple  Materials  of  her  Novel 229 

Individualism  displayed  by  the  Tullivers 23c 

Love  and  not  Justice  is  our  Highest  Need 23? 


I — p, 


Table  of  Contents  xv 

PAGE 

Maggie  TuUiver  and  Aurora  Leigh     .    •       -.,..-.,    241 

George  Eliot  makes  the  Commonplace  Heroic    .....    243 

essimism  confuted  by  Victorian  Women 253 


XI 


Silas  Marner  and  the  Pardoner's  Tale 256 

Summary  of  Silas  Marner 258 

George  Eliot  Supreme  in  portraying  Spiritual  Regeneration  260 

Daniel  Deronda 261 

Interweaving  of  Two  Stories 263 

"  Is  Life  Worth  Living  ? "  answered  for  Daniel  and  Gwendolen  264 

What  is  a  Repentance  ? 264 

Illustrations  from  Shakspere 265 

The  Novel  excels  the  Drama  in  depicting  Spiritual  States    .  267 

Paradise  Lost 272 

Shakspere's  Limitations 272 

Objections  to  Z?a«z>/Z>^^^«</a  examined 273 

It  is  not  a  Pro-Jewish  Tract 274 

Is  Daniel  Deronda  a  Prig  ? 275 

The  Truth  of  the  Book  makes  Society  Wince 275 


XII 

\yfjeoTge  Eliot's  Moral  Purpose 279 

<r"  Art  for  Art's  Sake  " 281 

No  Real  Beauty  divorced  from  Goodness 282 

Ideal  Love  as  described  by  Emerson 286 

Beauty  as  described  by  Emerson 287 

Scott's  Work  is  mostly  6^«raoral 289 

Influence  of  Moral  Purpose  on  Art 289 

Great  Poetry,  except  the  Hebrew,  Untranslatable    ....  290 

I  English  Fiction  avowedly  Didactic 294 

George  Eliot  and  the  Jews 295 

Her  Life  in  London 297 

How  far  influenced  by  Herbert  Spencer 298 

Her  Personal  Habits 300 

List  of  her  Works 300 

Her  Love  for  Humanity 301 

.Conclusion .,,,,.,,•«...  302 


The   English  Novel 

A  Study  in 
The  Development  of  Personality 


I 

The  series  of  lectures  which  I  last  had  the  pleasure 
of  delivering  in  this  hall  was  devoted  to  the  exposition 
of  what  is  beyond  doubt  the  most  remarkable,  the  most 
persistent,  the  most  wide-spread,  and  the  most  noble 
of  all  those  methods  of  arranging  words  and  ideas  in 
definite  relations  which  have  acquired  currency  among 
men  —  namely,  the  method  of  verse,  or  formal  poetry. 
That  exposition  began  by  reducing  all  possible  phe- 
nomena of  verse  to  terms  of  vibration ;  and  having  thus 
secured  at  once  a  solid  physical  basis  for  this  science, 
and  a  precise  nomenclature  in  which  we  could  talk 
intelligibly  upon  this  century-befogged  subject,  we  ad- 
vanced gradually  from  the  most  minute  to  the  largest 
possible  considerations  upon  the  matter  in  hand. 

Now  wishing  that  such  courses  as  I  might  give  here 
should  preserve  a  certain  coherence  with  each  other,  I 
have  hoped  that  I  could  secure  that  end  by  successively 
treating  the  great  forms  of  modern  literature ;  and, 
wishing  further  to  gain  whatever  advantage  of  entertain- 
ment for  you  may  lie  in  contrast  and  variety,  I  have 

X  I 


2  The  English  Novel 

thought  that  inasmuch  as  we  have  already  studied  the 
verse-form  in  general,  we  might  now  profitably  study 
some  great  prose-form  in  particular,  and  —  in  still  further 
contrast  —  that  we  might  study  that  form  not  so  much 
analytically  —  as  when  we  developed  the  science  of 
formal  poetry  from  a  single  physical  principle  —  but 
this  time  synthetically,  from  the  point  of  view  of  literary 
art  rather  than  of  literary  science. 

I  am  further  led  to  this  general  plan  by  the  con- 
sideration that  so  far  as  I  know  —  but  my  reading  in  this 
direction  is  not  wide  and  I  may  be  in  error  —  there  is  no 
book  extant  in  any  language  which  gives  a  conspectus 
of  all  those  well-marked  and  widely-varying  literary 
forms  which  have  differentiated  themselves  in  the  course 
of  time,  and  of  the  curious  and  subtle  needs  of  the 
modern  civilized  man  which,  under  the  stress  of  that 
imperious  demand  for  expression  which  all  man's  emo- 
tions make,  have  respectively  determined  the  modes 
of  such  expression  to  be  in  one  case  The  Novel,  in 
another  The  Sermon,  in  another  The  Newspaper  Leader, 
in  another  The  Scientific  Essay,  in  another  The  Popular 
Magazine  Article,  in  another  The  Semi-Scientific  Lecture, 
and  so  on:  each  of  these  prose-forms,  you  observe, 
having  its  own  limitations  and  fitnesses  quite  as  well- 
defined  as  the  sonnet- form,  the  ballad-form,  the  drama- 
form,  and  the  like,  in  verse. 

And,  with  this  general  plan,  a  great  number  of  con- 
siderations, which  I  hope  will  satisfactorily  emerge  as  we 
go  on,  lead  me  irresistibly  to  select  the  novel  as  the 
particular  prose-form  for  our  study. 

It  happens  indeed  that  over  and  above  the  purely 
literary  interest  which  would  easily  give  this  form  the 
first  place  in  such  a  series  as  the  present,  the  question  of 
the  novel  has  just  at  this  time  become  one  of  the  most 


The  Development  of  Personality  3 

pressing  and  vital  of  all  the  practical  problems  which 
beset  our  moral  and  social  economy. 

The  novel  —  what  we  call  the  novel  —  is  a  new  inven- 
tion. It  is  customary  to  date  the  first  English  novel  with 
Richardson  in  1 740 ;  and  just  as  it  has  been  impossible 
to  confine  other  great  inventions  to  the  service  of  virtue 
—  for  the  thief  can  send  a  telegram  to  his  pal  as  easily 
as  the  sick  man  to  his  doctor,  and  the  locomotive  spins 
along  no  less  merrily  because  ten  car-loads  of  rascals 
may  be  profiting  by  its  speed  —  so  vice  as  well  as  virtue 
has  availed  itself  of  the  novel-form,  and  we  have  such 
spectacles  as  Scott  and  Dickens  and  Eliot  and  Mac- 
donald  using  this  means  to  purify  the  air  in  one  place 
while  Zola  in  another  applies  the  very  same  means  to 
defiling  the  whole  earth  and  slandering  all  humanity 
under  the  sacred  names  of  "  naturalism,"  of  "  science," 
of  "physiology."  Now  I  need  not  waste  time  in  de- 
scanting before  this  audience  upon  the  spread  of  the  novel 
among  all  classes  of  modern  readers  :  while  I  have  been 
writing  this,  a  well-considered  paper  on  "  Fiction  in  our 
Public  Libraries"  has  appeared  in  the  current  Inter- 
national Review  which,  among  many  suggestive  state- 
ments, declares  that  out  of  pretty  nearly  five  millions 
(4,872,595)  of  volumes  circulated  in  five  years  by  the 
Boston  Public  Library  nearly  four  millions  (3,824,938), 
that  is  about  four-fifths,  were  classed  as  "Juveniles 
and  Fiction;"  and  —  merely  mentioning  the  strength 
which  these  figures  gain  when  considered  along  with  the 
fact  that  they  represent  the  reading  of  a  people  supposed 
to  be  more  "  solid  "  in  literary  matter  than  any  other 
in  the  country  —  if  we  inquire  into  the  proportion  at 
Baltimore,  I  fancy  I  have  only  to  hold  up  this  copy  of 
James's  The  Americany  which  I  borrowed  the  other  day 
from  the  Mercantile  Library,  and  which  I  think  I  may 


4  The  English  Novel 

say,  after  considerable  rummaging  about  the  books  of 
that  institution,  certainly  bears  more  marks  of  *' circula- 
tion" than  any  solid  book  in  it.  In  short,  as  a  people, 
the  novel  is  educating  us.  Thus  we  cannot  take  any 
final  or  secure  solace  in  the  discipline  and  system  of 
our  schools  and  universities  until  we  have  also  learned 
to  regulate  this  fascinating  universal  teacher  which 
has  taken  such  hold  upon  all  minds,  from  the  gravest 
scholar  down  to  the  boot-black  shivering  on  the  windy 
street  corner  over  his  dime-novel, —  this  educator  whose 
principles  are  fastening  themselves  upon  your  boy's 
mind  so  that  long  after  he  has  forgotten  his  amo  and  his 
tupto  they  will  be  controlling  his  relations  to  his  fellow- 
men  and  determining  his  happiness  for  life. 

But  we  can  take  no  really  effective  action  upon  this 
matter  until  we  understand  precisely  what  the  novel  is 
and  means ;  and  it  is  therefore  with  the  additional  plea- 
sure of  stimulating  you  to  systematize  and  extend  your 
views  upon  a  living  issue  which  demands  your  opinion, 
that  I  now  invite  you  to  enter  with  me  without  further 
preliminary  upon  a  series  of  studies  in  which  it  is  pro- 
posed, first,  to  inquire  what  is  that  special  relation  of  the 
novel  to  the  modern  man  by  virtue  of  which  it  has  become 
a  paramount  literary  form,  and,  secondly,  to  illustrate 
this  abstract  inquiry,  when  completed,  by  some  concrete 
readings  in  the  greatest  of  modern  English  novelists. 

In  the  course  of  this  inquiry  I  shall  be  called  on  to 
bring  before  you  some  of  the  very  largest  conceptions  of 
which  the  mind  is  capable,  and  inasmuch  as  several  of 
the  minor  demonstrations  will  begin  somewhat  remotely 
from  the  novel,  it  will  save  me  many  details  which 
would  be  otherwise  necessary  if  I  indicate  in  a  dozen 
words  the  four  special  lines  of  development  along  one  or 
other  of  which  I  shall  be  always  travelling. 


The  Development  of  Personality  5 

My  first  line  will  concern  itself  with  the  enormous 
growth  in  the  personality  of  man  which  our  time  reveals 
when  compared  for  instance  with  the  time  of  ^schylus. 
I  shall  insist  with  the  utmost  reverence  that  between 
every  human  being  and  every  other  human  being  exists 
a  radical,  unaccountable,  inevitable  difference  from  birth ; 
this  sacred  difference  between  man  and  man,  by  virtue 
of  which  I  am  I  and  you  are  you,  this  marvellous 
separation  which  we  express  by  the  terms  "personal 
identity,"  "self-hood,"  "me,"  —  it  is  the  unfolding  of 
this,  I  shall  insist,  which  since  the  time  of  ^schylus 
(say)  has  wrought  all  those  stupendous  changes  in  the 
relation  of  man  to  God,  to  physical  nature,  and  to  his 
fellow,  which  have  culminated  in  the  modern  cultus.  I 
can  best  bring  before  you  the  length  and  breadth  of  this 
idea  of  modern  personality  as  I  conceive  it,  by  stating  it 
in  terms  which  have  recently  been  made  prominent  and 
familiar  by  the  discussion  as  to  the  evolution  of  genius, 
a  phase  of  which  appears  in  a  very  agreeable  paper  by 
Mr.  John  Fiske  in  the  current  Atlantic  Monthly  on 
"  Sociology  and  Hero  Worship."  Says  Mr.  Fiske,  in  a 
certain  part  of  this  article,  "  Every  species  of  animals  or 
plants  consists  of  a  great  number  of  individuals  which 
are  nearly  but  not  exactly  alike.  Each  individual  varies 
slightly  in  one  characteristic  or  another  from  a  certain 
type  which  expresses  the  average  among  all  the  indi- 
viduals of  the  species.  .  .  .  Now  the  moth  with  his 
proboscis  twice  as  long  as  the  average  ...  is  what  we 
call  a  spontaneous  variation,  and  the  Darwin  or  the 
Helmholtz  is  what  we  call  a  *  genius  ' ;  and  the  analogy 
between  the  two  kinds  of  variation  is  obvious  enough." 
He  proceeds  in  another  place  :  "  We  cannot  tell  why  a 
given  moth  has  a  proboscis  exactly  an  inch  and  a  quarter 
in  length  any  more  than  we  can  tell  why  Shakspere  was 


6  The  English  Novel 

a  great  dramatist,"  —  there  being  absolutely  no  pre- 
cedent conditions  by  which  the  most  ardent  evolutionist 
could  evolve  WiUiam  Shakspere,  for  example,  from  old 
John  Shakspere  and  his  wife.  "  The  social  philosopher 
must  simply  accept  geniuses  as  data,  just  as  Darwin  ac- 
cepts his  spontaneous  variations." 

But  now  if  we  reflect  upon  this  prodigious  series  of 
spontaneous  variations  which  I  have  called  the  sacred 
difference  between  man  and  man,  —  this  personality  which 
every  father  and  mother  are  astonished  at  anew  every 
day  when  out  of  six  children  they  perceive  that  each 
one  of  the  six,  from  the  very  earliest  moment  of  activity, 
has  shown  his  own  distinct  individuality,  differing  wholly 
from  either  parent,  the  child  who  most  resembles  the 
parent  physically  often  having  a  personality  which 
crosses  that  of  the  parent  at  the  sharpest  angles,  —  this 
radical,  indestructible,  universal  personality  which  entitles 
every  "  me  "  to  its  privacy,  which  has  in  course  of  time 
made  the  Englishman's  house  his  castle,  which  has  devel- 
oped the  Rights  of  Man,  the  American  Republic,  the 
supreme  prerogative  of  the  woman  to  say  whom  she  will 
love,  what  man  she  shall  marry,  —  this  personality  so  pre- 
cious that  not  even  the  miserablest  wretch,  with  no  other 
possession  but  his  personality,  has  ever  been  brought  to 
say  he  would  be  willing  to  exchange  it  entire  for  that  of 
the  happiest  being,  —  this  personality  which  has  brought 
about  that  whereas  in  the  time  of  ^schylus  the  common 
man  was  simply  a  creature  of  the  State,  like  a  modern 
corporation  with  rights  and  powers  strictly  limited  by  the 
State's  charter,  now  he  is  a  genuine  sovereign  who  makes 
the  State,  a  king  as  to  every  minutest  particle  of  his  in- 
dividuality so  long  as  that  kinghood  does  not  cross  the 
kinghood  of  his  fellow,  —  when  we  reflect  upon  this  awful 
spontaneous  variation  of  personality,  this  "  mystery  in  us 


The  Development  of  Personality  7 

which  calls  itself  /"  (as  Thomas  Carlyle  has  somewhere 
called  it),  which  makes  every  man  scientifically  a  human 
atom,  yet  an  atom  endowed  above  all  other  atoms  with 
the  power  to  choose  its  own  mode  of  motion,  its  own 
combining  equivalent,  —  when  further  we  reflect  upon  the 
relation  of  each  human  atom  to  each  other  human  atom 
and  to  the  great  Giver  of  personalities  to  these  atoms, — 
how  each  is  indissolubly  bound  to  each  and  to  Him,  and 
yet  how  each  is  discretely  parted  and  impassably  sepa- 
rated from  each  and  from  Him  by  a  gulf  which  is  simply 
no  less  deep  than  the  width  between  the  finite  and  the 
infinite,  —  when  we  reflect,  finally,  that  it  is  this  simple, 
indivisible,  radical,  indestructible,  new  force  which  each 
child  brings  into  the  world  under  the  name  of  its  self 
which  controls  the  whole  life  of  that  child,  so  that  its 
path  is  always  a  resultant  of  its  own  individual  force  on 
the  one  hand,  and  of  the  force  of  its  surrounding  circum- 
stances on  the  other,  — we  are  bound  to  confess,  it  seems 
to  me,  that  such  spontaneous  variations  carry  us  upon  a 
plane  of  mystery  very  far  above  those  merely  unessential 
variations  of  the  offspring  from  the  parental  type  in 
physique,  and  even  above  those  rare  abnormal  variations 
which  we  call  genius. 

In  meditating  upon  this  matter,  I  found  a  short  time 
ago  a  poem  of  Tennyson's  floating  about  the  newspapers 
which  so  beautifully  and  reverently  chants  this  very  sense 
of  personality,  that  I  must  read  you  a  line  or  two  from  it. 
I  have  since  observed  that  much  fun  has  been  made  of 
this  piece,  and  I  have  seen  elaborate  burlesques  upon  it. 
But  I  think  such  an  attitude  could  be  possible  only  to 
one  who  had  not  passed  along  this  line  of  thought.  At 
any  rate  the  poem  seemed  to  me  a  very  noble  and  raptu- 
rous hymn  to  the  great  Personality  above  us,  acknow- 
ledging the  mystery  of  our  own  personalities  as  finitely 


8  The  English  Novel 

dependent  upon,  and  yet  so  infinitely  divided  from  His 
Personality. 

This  poem  is  called  De  Profundis — Two  Greetings ^  and 
is  addressed  to  a  new-bom  child.  I  have  time  to  read 
only  a  line  or  two,  here  and  there ;  you  will  find  the 
whole  poem  much  more  satisfactory.  Please  observe, 
however,  the  ample  comforting  phrases  and  summaries 
with  which  Tennyson  expresses  the  poetic  idea  of  that 
personality  which  I  have  just  tried  to  express  from  the 
point  of  view  of  science,  of  the  evolutionist : 

"  Out  of  the  deep,  my  child,  out  of  the  deep, 
When  all  that  was  to  be  in  all  that  was 
Whirl'd  for  a  million  aeons  thro'  the  vast 
Waste  dawn  of  multitudinous-eddying  light  — 

Thro'  all  this  changing  world  of  changeless  law, 
And  every  phase  of  ever-heightening  life 
.....         Thou  comest: 
•  ••*.. 

O,  dear  Spirit,  half-lost 
In  thine  own  shadows  and  this  fleshly  sign 
That  thou  art  thou  —  who  wailest,  being  born 
And  banish'd  into  mystery  and  the  pain 
Of  this  divisible-indivisible  world, 

.  .  .  Our  mortal  veil 
And  shatter'd  phantom  of  that  infinite  One 
Who  made  thee  inconceivably  thyself 
Out  of  his  whole  world  — self  and  all  in  all  — 
Live  thou,  and  of  the  grain  and  husk,  the  grape 
And  ivy  berry  choose ;  and  still  depart 
From  death  to  death  thro'  life  and  life,  and  find 

This  main  miracle,  that  thou  art  thou. 

With  power  on  thy  own  act  and  on  the  world. 

We  feel  we  are  nothing—  for  all  is  Thou  and  in  Thee ; 
We  feel  we  are  something  —  that  also  has  come  from  Thee ; 
We  are  nothing,  O  Thou  —  but  Thou  wilt  help  us  to  be ; 
Hallowed  be  Thy  name  —  Hallelujah  I  " 


The  Development  of  Personality  5, 

I  find  some  expressions  here  which  give  me  great 
satisfaction  :  "  The  Infinite  One  who  made  thee  inconceiv' 
ably  thyself,  —  this  divisible-indivisible  world,  this  main 
miracle  that  thou  art  thou,"  etc. 

Now  it  is  with  this  "main  miracle,"  that  I  am  I,  and 
you,  you  —  with  this  personality,  that  my  first  train  of 
thought  will  busy  itself;  and  I  shall  try  to  show,  by  sev- 
eral concrete  illustrations  from  the  Hues  and  between  the 
lines  of  ^schylus  and  Plato  and  the  like  writers  com- 
pared with  several  modern  writers,  how  feeble  the  sense 
and  influence  of  it  is  in  their  time  as  contrasted  with  ours. 

In  my  second  line  of  development,  I  shall  call  your 
attention  to  what  seems  to  me  a  very  remarkable  and 
suggestive  fact :  to-wit,  that  Physical  Science,  Music,  and 
the  Novel,  all  take  their  rise  at  the  same  time  :  of  course, 
I  mean  what  we  moderns  call  science,  music,  and  the 
novel.  For  example,  if  we  select  —  for  the  sake  of  well- 
known  representative  names  —  Sir  Isaac  Newton  (1642), 
John  Sebastian  Bach  (1685)  and  Samuel  Richardson 
(1689),  the  first  standing  for  the  rise  of  modern  science, 
the  second  for  the  rise  of  modern  music,  the  third  for  the 
rise  of  the  modern  novel,  and  observe  that  these  three 
men  are  born  within  fifty  years  of  each  other,  we  cannot 
fail  to  find  ourselves  in  the  midst  of  a  thousand  surprising 
suggestions  and  inferences.  For  in  our  sweeping  arc 
from  ^schylus  to  the  present  time,  fifty  years  subtend 
scarcely  any  space ;  we  may  say  these  men  are  born 
together.  And  here  the  word  accident  has  no  meaning. 
Time,  progress,  then,  have  no  accidents. 

In  this  second  train  of  thought  I  shall  endeavor  to 
connect  these  phenomena  with  the  principle  of  person- 
ality developed  in  the  first  train,  and  shall  try  to  show 
that  this  science,  music,  and  the  novel,  are  flowerings- 
out  of  that  principle  in  various  directions  /  for  instance, 


lO  The  English  Novel 

each  man,  in  this  growth  of  personality,  feeling  himself 
in  direct  and  personal  relations  with  physical  nature  (not 
in  relations  obscured  by  the  vague  intermediary  hama- 
dryads and  fauns  of  the  Greek  system),  a  general  desire 
to  know  the  exact  truth  about  nature  arises,  and  this 
desire  carried  to  a  certain  enthusiasm  in  the  nature  of 
given  men  —  behold  the  man  of  science  ;  a  similar  feel- 
ing of  direct  personal  relation  to  the  Unknown,  acting 
similarly  upon  particular  men,  —  behold  the  musician, 
and  the  ever-increasing  tendency  of  the  modern  man  to 
worship  God  in  terms  of  music ;  likewise,  a  similar  feel- 
ing of  direct  personal  relation  to  each  individual  member 
of  humanity,  high  or  low,  rich  or  poor,  acting  similarly, 
gives  us  such  a  novel  as  the  Mill  on  the  FlosSy  for 
instance,  where  for  a  long  time  we  find  ourselves  inter- 
ested in  two  mere  children  —  Tom  and  Maggie  Tulliver 
, —  or  such  novels  as  those  of  Dickens  and  his  fellow- 
■host  who  have  called  upon  our  human  relation  to  poor, 
iinheroic  people. 

In  my  third  train  of  thought  I  shall  attempt  to  show 
that  the  increase  of  personalities  thus  going  on  has 
brought  about  such  complexities  of  relation  that  the 
older  forms  of  expression  were  inadequate  to  them  ;  and 
that  the  resulting  necessity  has  developed  the  wonder- 
fully free  and  elastic  form  of  the  modern  novel  out  of  the 
more  rigid  Greek  drama,  through  the  transition  form  of 
the  Elizabethan  drama. 

And,  fourthly,  I  shall  offer  copious  readings  from  some 
of  the  most  characteristic  modern  novels  in  illustration 
of  the  general  principles  thus  brought  forward. 

Here,  —  as  the  old  preacher  Hugh  Latimer  grimly  said 
in  closing  one  of  his  powerful  descriptions  of  future  pun- 
ishment, —  you  see  your  fare. 

Permit  me,  then,  to  begin  the  execution  of  this  plan 


The  Development  of  Personality        1 1 

by  bringing  before  you  two  matters  which  will  be  con- 
veniently disposed  of  in  the  outset  because  they  affect  all 
these  four  lines  of  thought  in  general,  and  because 
I  find  the  very  vaguest  ideas  prevailing  about  them 
among  those  whose  special  attention  happens  not  to 
have  been  called  this  way. 

As  to  the  first  point :  permit  me  to  remind  you  how 
lately  these  prose-forms  have  been  developed  in  our  liter- 
ature as  compared  with  the  forms  of  verse.  Indeed, 
abandoning  the  thought  of  any  particular  forms  of  prose, 
consider  for  how  long  a  time  good  English  poetry  was 
written  before  any  good  English  prose  appears.  It  is 
historical  that  as  far  back  as  the  seventh  century  Csedmon 
is  writing  a  strong  English  poem  in  an  elaborate  form  of 
verse.  Well-founded  conjecture  carries  us  back  much 
farther  than  this ;  but  without  relying  upon  that,  we  have 
clear  knowledge  that  all  along  the  time  when  Beowulf- 
and  The  Wanderer — to  me  one  of  the  most  artistic, 
and  affecting  of  English  poems — and  The  Battle  of 
Maldon  are  being  written,  all  along  the  time  when 
Caedmon  and  Aldhelm  and  the  somewhat  mythical 
Cynewulf  are  singing,  formal  poetry  or  verse  has  reached 
a  high  stage  of  artistic  development.  But  not  only  so  : 
after  the  Norman  change  is  consummated  and  our  lan- 
guage has  fairly  assimilated  that  tributary  stock  of  words 
and  ideas  and  influences,  the  poetic  advance,  the 
development  of  verse,  goes  steadily  on.  If  you  examine 
the  remains  of  our  lyric  poetry  written  along  in  the 
twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  —  short  and  unstudied 
little  songs  as  many  of  them  are,  songs  which  come 
upon  us  out  of  that  obscure  period  like  brief  Httle  bird- 
calls from  a  thick-leaved  wood  —  if,  I  say,  we  examine 
these  songs,  written  as  many  of  them  are  by  nobody  in 
particular,  it  is  impossible  not  to  believe  that  a  great 


12  The  English  Novel 

mass  of  poetry,  some  of  which  must  have  been  very 
beautiful,  was  written  in  the  two  hundred  years  just 
before  Chaucer,  and  that  an  extremely  small  proportion 
of  it  can  have  come  down  to  us. 

But,  in  all  this  period,  where  is  the  piece  of  English 
prose  that  corresponds  with  The  Wanderer,  or  with  the 
daintier  Cuckoo-Song  of  the  early  twelfth  century?  In 
point  of  fact,  we  cannot  say  that  even  the  conception  of  an 
artistic  prose  has  occurred  to  English  literary  endeavor 
until  long  after  Chaucer.  King  Alfred's  Translations, 
the  English  Chronicle,  the  Homilies  of  ^Ifric,  are 
simple  and  clear  enough ;  and,  coming  down  later,  the 
English  Bible  set  forth  by  Wyclif  and  his  contempo- 
raries. Wyclifs  own  sermons  and  tracts,  and  Mandeville's 
account  of  his  travels  are  effective  enough,  each  to  its 
own  end.  But  in  all  these  the  form  is  so  far  overridden 
by  the  direct  pressing  purpose,  either  didactic  or 
educational,  that  —  with  exceptions  I  cannot  now  specify 
in  favor  of  the  Wyclif  Bible  —  I  can  find  none  of  them  in 
which  the  prose  seems  controlled  by  considerations  of 
beauty.  Perhaps  the  most  curious  and  interesting  proof 
I  could  adduce  of  the  obliviousness  of  even  the  most 
artistic  Englishmen  in  this  time  to  the  possibility  of 
a  melodious  and  uncloying  English  prose,  is  the  prose 
work  of  Chaucer.  While,  so  far  as  concerns  the  mere 
music  of  verse,  I  cannot  call  Chaucer  a  great  artist,  yet 
he  was  the  greatest  of  his  time ;  from  him,  therefore, 
we  have  the  right  to  expect  the  best  craftsmanship  in 
words;  for  all  fine  prose  depends  as  much  upon  its 
rhythms  and  correlated  proportions  as  fine  verse,  and, 
now,  since  we  have  an  art  of  prose,  it  is  a  perfect  test  of 
the  real  excellence  of  a  poet  in  verse  to  try  his  corre- 
sponding excellence  in  prose.  But  in  Chaucer's  time 
there  is  no  art  of  English  prose.     Listen,  for  example,  to 


The  Development  of  Personality        13 

the  opening  lines  of  that  one  of  Chaucer's  Canterbury 
series  which  he  calls  The  Parson's  Tale,  and  which  is  in 
prose  throughout.  It  happens  very  patly  to  my  present 
discussion  that  in  the  Prologue  to  this  tale  some  con- 
versation occurs  which  reveals  to  us  quite  clearly  a 
current  idea  of  Chaucer's  time  as  to  the  proper  distinc- 
tion between  prose  and  verse  —  or  "  rym  "  —  and  as  to  the 
functions  and  subject-matter  peculiarly  belonging  to  each 
of  these  forms ;  and,  for  that  reason,  let  me  preface  my 
quotation  from  The  Parson's  Tale  with  a  bit  of  it.  As 
the  Canterbury  Pilgrims  are  jogging  merrily  along, 
presently  it  appears  that  but  one  more  tale  is  needed 
to  carry  out  the  original  proposition,  and  so  the  ever- 
important  Host  calls  on  the  Parson  for  it,  as  follows : 

"  As  we  were  entryng  at  a  thropes  ende, 
For  while  our  Host,  as  he  was  wont  to  gye, 
As  in  this  caas,  our  joly  compaignye, 
Sayd  in  this  wise :  *  Lordyngs,  everichoon. 
Now  lakketh  us  no  tales  moo  than  oon,' "  etc., 

and  turning  to  the  Parson, 

"  *  Sir  Prest,'  quod  he,  *  artow  a  vicory  ? 
Or  artow  a  persoun  ?    Say  soth,  by  thy  fay, 
Be  what  thou  be,  ne  breke  thou  nat  oure  play ; 
For  every  man,  save  thou,  hath  told  his  tale. 
Unbocle  and  schew  us  what  is  in  thy  male. 

Tel  us  a  fable  anoon,  for  cokkes  boones ! '  " 

Whereupon  the  steadfast  Parson  proceeds  to  assure  the 
company  that  whatever  he  may  have  in  his  male  [wallet] 
there  is  none  of  your  light-minded  and  fictitious  verse 
in  it ;  nothing  but  grave  and  reverend  prose. 

"  This  Persoun  him  answerede  al  at  oones ; 
*  Thow  getist  fable  noon  i-told  for  me ;  "* 


14  The  English  Novel 

(And  you  will  presently  observe  that  "  fable  "  in  the 
Parson's  mind  means  very  much  the  same  with  verse  or 
poetry,  and  that  the  whole  business  of  fiction  —  that  same 
fiction  which  has  now  come  to  occupy  such  a  command- 
ing plane  with  us  moderns,  and  which  we  are  to  study 
with  such  reverence  under  its  form  of  the  novel  —  implies 
downright  lying  and  wickedness.) 

"  *  Thow  getist  fable  noon  i-told  for  me ; 
For  Poul,  that  writeth  unto  Timothe, 
Repreveth  hem  that  weyveth  sothfastnesse, 
And  tellen  fables  and  such  wrecchednesse, 

For  which  I  say,  ii  that  yow  lust  to  hiere 
Moralite  and  vertuous  matiere,' " 

(that  is  —  as  we  shall  presently  see  —  prose) 

"  *  And  thanne  that  ye  will  yive  me  audience, 
I  wol  ful  fayne  at  Cristis  reverence, 
Do  yow  plesaunce  leful,  as  I  can. 
But  trusteth  wel,  I  am  a  Suthern  man, 
I  can  nat  geste,  rum,  ram,  ruf,  by  letter, 
Ne,  God  wot,  rym  hold  I  but  litel  better ; 
And  therfor,  if  yow  lust,  I  wol  not  glose, 
I  wol  yow  telle  a  mery  tale  in  prose/  '* 

Here  our  honest  Parson,  (and  he  was  honest :  I  am 
frightfully  tempted  to  go  clean  away  from  my  path  and 
read  that  heart-filling  description  of  him  which  Chaucer 
gives  in  the  general  Prologue  to  the  Canterbury  Tales) 
sweeps  away  the  whole  literature  of  verse  and  of  fiction 
with  the  one  contemptuous  word  "  glose  "  —  by  which  he 
seems  to  mean  a  sort  of  shame-faced  lying  all  the  more 
pitiful  because  done  in  verse  —  and  sets  up  prose  as  the 
proper  vehicle  for  "  morality  and  vertuous  matiere." 

With  this  idea  of  the  function  of  prose,  you  will  not 
be  surprised  to  find,  as  I  read  these  opening  sentences 


The  Development  of  Personality       15 

of  the  Parson's  so-called  Tale,  that  the  style  is  rigidly 
sententious,  and  that  the  movement  of  the  whole  is  like 
that  of  a  long  string  of  proverbs,  which  of  course  pres- 
ently becomes  intolerably  droning  and  wearisome.  The 
Parson  begins  : 

"  Many  ben  the  weyes  espirituels  that  leden  folk  to  oure 
Lord  Ihesu  Crist,  and  to  the  regne  of  glorie ;  of  whiche 
weyes  ther  is  a  ful  noble  wey,  which  may  not  faile  to  no 
man  ne  to  womman,  that  thurgh  synne  hath  mysgon  fro 
the  righte  wey  of  Jerusalem  celestial ;  and  this  wey  is 
cleped  penitence.  Of  which  men  schulden  gladly  herken 
and  enquere  with  al  here  herte,  to  wyte,  what  is  peni- 
tence, and  whens  it  is  cleped  penitence  ?  And  in  what 
maner  and  in  how  many  maneres  been  the  acciones  01 
workynges  of  penaunce,  and  how  many  spieces  ben  of 
penitences,  and  whiche  thinges  apperteynen  and  byhoven 
to  penitence,  and  whiche  thinges  destourben  penitence." 

In  reading  page  after  page  of  this  bagpipe-bass,  one 
has  to  remember  strenuously  all  the  moral  beauty  of  the 
Parson's  character  in  order  to  forgive  the  droning  ugliness 
of  his  prose.  Nothing  could  better  realize  the  descrip- 
tion which  Tennyson's  Northern  Farmer  gives  of  his 
parson's  manner  of  preaching  and  the  effect  thereof ; 

"  An'  I  hallus  coomed  to  's  choorch  afoor  moy  Sally  wur  dead. 
An*  'card  urn  a  bummin'  awaay  loike  a  buzzard-clock  ower 

my  'ead. 
An'  I  niver  knaw'd  whot  a  mean'd,  but  I  thowt  a  'ad  summut 

to  saay, 
An*  I  thowt  a  said  whot  a  owt  to  'a  said  an'  I  coomed  awaay.'* 

It  must  be  said,  however,  in  justice  to  Chaucer,  that 
he  writes  better  prose  than  this  when  he  really  sets  about 
telling  a  tale.  What  the  Parson  calls  his  "  Tale  "  turns 
out  —  to  the  huge  disgust,  I  suspect,  of  several  other  pil- 
grims besides  the  Host  —  to  be  nothing  more  than  a 


1 6  The  English  Novel 

homily  or  sermon,  in  which  the  propositions  about  peni- 
tence, with  many  minor  heads  and  sub-divisions,  are  un- 
sparingly developed  to  the  bitter  end.  But  in  the  Tale 
of  Melihoeus  his  inimitable  faculty  of  story-telling  comes 
to  his  aid  and  determines  his  sentences  to  a  little  more 
variety  and  picturesqueness,  though  the  sententious  still 
predominates.  Here,  for  example,  is  a  bit  of  dialogue 
between  Meliboeus  and  his  wife,  which  I  selected  be- 
cause, over  and  above  its  applications  here  as  early  prose, 
we  shall  find  it  particularly  suggestive  presently  when  we 
come  to  compare  it  with  some  dialogue  in  George  Eliot's 
Adam  Bede  where  the  conversation  is  very  much  upon 
the  same  topic. 

It  seems  that  Meliboeus,  being  still  a  young  man,  goes 
away  into  the  fields,  leaving  his  wife  Prudence  and  his 
daughter — ^whose  name  some  of  the  texts  give  in  its 
Greek  form  as  Sophia,  while  others  quaintly  enough 
call  her  Sapience,  translating  the  Greek  into  Latin — in 
the  house.  Thereupon  "  three  of  his  olde  foos  "  (says 
Chaucer)  "  have  it  espyed,  and  setten  laddres  to  the 
walles  of  his  hous,  and  by  the  wyndowes  ben  entred,  and 
beetyn  his  wyf,  and  woundid  his  daughter  with  fyve 
mortal  woundes,  in  fyve  sondry  places,  that  is  to  sayn,  in 
here  feet,  in  here  handes,  in  here  eres,  in  here  nose,  and  in 
here  mouth;  and  lafte  her  for  deed,  and  went  away." 
Meliboeus  assembles  a  great  council  of  his  friends,  and 
these  advised  him  to  make  war,  with  an  interminable  dull 
succession  of  sententious  maxims  and  quotations  which 
would  surely  have  maddened  a  modern  person  to  such 
a  degree  that  he  would  have  incontinently  levied  war 
upon  his  friends  as  well  as  his  enemies.  But  after  awhile 
Dame  Prudence  modestly  advises  against  the  war. 
"  This  Meliboeus  answerde  unto  his  wyf  Prudence:  *I 
purpose  not,'  quod  he,  *  to  werke  by  thy  counseil,  for 


The  Development  of  Personality        17 

many  causes  and  resouns ;  for  certes  every  wight  wolde 
holde  me  thanne  a  fool,  this  is  to  sayn,  if  I  for  thy  coun- 
seil  wolde  chaunge  things  that  affirmed  ben  by  so  many 
wise. 

"  *  Secondly,  I  say  that  alle  wommen  be  wikked,  and 
noon  good  of  hem  alle.  For  of  a  thousand  men,  saith 
Solomon,  I  fond  oon  good  man;  but  certes  of  alle 
wommen  good  womman  fond  I  never  noon.  And  also 
certes,  if  I  governede  me  by  thy  counseil,  it  schulde  seme 
that  I  hadde  yiven  to  the  over  me  the  maistry ;  and  God 
forbid  er  it  so  were.     For  Ihesus  Syrac  saith,'  "  etc.,  etc. 

You  observe  how,  although  this  is  dialogue  between  man 
and  wife,  the  prose  nevertheless  tends  to  the  sententious, 
and  every  remark  must  be  supported  with  some  dry  old 
maxim  or  epigrammatic  saw.  Observe  too,  by  the  way, 
—  and  we  shall  find  this  point  most  suggestive  in  study- 
ing the  modern  dialogue  in  George  Eliot's  novels,  etc.  — 
that  there  is  absolutely  no  individuality  or  personality  in 
the  talk ;  Meliboeus  drones  along  exactly  as  his  friends 
do,  and  his  wife  quotes  old  authoritative  saws  just  as  he 
does.  But  Dame  Prudence  replies,  —  and  all  those  who 
are  acquainted  with  the  pungent  Mrs.  Poyser  in  George 
Eliot's  Adam  Bede  will  congratulate  Meliboeus  that  his 
foregoing  sentiments  concerning  woman  were  uttered 
five  hundred  years  before  that  lady's  tongue  began  to 
wag,  —  "  When  Dame  Prudence,  ful  debonerly  and  with 
gret  pacience,  hadde  herd  al  that  hir  housbande  likede  for 
to  seye,  thanne  axede  sche  of  him  licence  for  to  speke, 
and  sayde  in  this  wise  :  '  My  Lord,'  quod  sche,  *  as  to 
your  firste  resoun,  certes  it  may  lightly  be  answered ;  for 
I  say  it  is  no  foly  to  chaunge  counsel  whan  the  thing  is 
chaungid,  or  elles  whan  the  thing  semeth  otherwise 
than  it  was  biforn.*  "  This  very  wise  position  she  sup- 
ports with  argument  and  authority,  and  then  goes  on 


1 8  The  English  Novel 

boldly  to  attack  not  exactly  Solomon's  wisdom  but  the 
number  of  data  from  which  he  drew  it :  "  *  And  though 
that  Solomon  say  he  fond  never  good  womman,  it  fol- 
with  nought  therfore  that  alle  wommen  ben  wicked  :  for 
though  that  he  fonde  noone  goode  wommen,  certes  many 
another  man  hath  founden  many  a  womman  ful  goode 
and  trewe :  '  "  (intimating,  what  is  doubtless  true,  that 
the  finding  of  a  good  womam  depends  largely  on  the 
kind  of  man  who  is  looking  for  her) . 

After  many  other  quite  logical  replies  to  all  of  Meli- 
bceus'  positions  Dame  Prudence  closes  with  the  follow- 
ing argument :  "  *  And  moreover,  whan  oure  Lord  hadde 
creat  Adam  oure  forme  fader,  he  sayde  in  this  wise  :  Hit 
is  not  goode  to  be  a  man  aloone ;  makes  we  to  him  an 
help  semblable  to  himself.  Here  may  ye  se  that  if  that 
a  womman  were  not  good,  and  hir  counseil  good  and 
profytable,  oure  Lord  God  of  heven  wolde  neither  have 
wrought  hem,  ne  called  hem  help  of  man,  but  rather  con- 
fusioun  of  man.  And  ther  sayde  oones  a  clerk  in  tuo 
versus,  What  is  better  than  gold  ?  Jasper.  And  what  is 
better  than  jasper?  Wisedom.  And  what  is  better  than 
wisedom  ?  Womman.  And  what  is  better  than  a  good 
womman?     Nothing.'" 

When  we  presently  come  to  contrast  this  little  scene 
between  man  and  wife  in  what  may  fairly  be  called  the 
nearest  approach  to  the  modern  novel  that  can  be  found 
before  the  fifteenth  century,  we  shall  find  a  surprising 
number  of  particulars,  besides  the  unmusical  tendency 
to  run  into  the  sententious  or  proverbial  form,  in  which 
the  modem  mode  of  thought  differs  from  that  of  the 
old  writer  from  whom  Chaucer  got  his  Meliboeus. 

This  sententious  monotune  (if  I  may  coin  a  word)  of 
the  prose,  when  falling  upon  a  modem  ear,  gives  almost 
a  comical  tang  even  to  the  gravest  utterances  of  the 


The  Development  of  Personality        19 

period.  For  example,  here  are  the  opening  lines  of  a 
fragment  of  prose  from  a  MS.  in  the  Cambridge 
University  Library,  reprinted  by  the  early  English  Text 
Society  in  the  issue  for  1870.  It  is  good,  pithy  reading, 
too.  It  is  called  The  Six  Wise  Masters^  Speech  of 
Tribulation, 

Observe  that  the  first  sentence,  though  purely  in  the 
way  of  narration,  is  just  as  sententious  in  form  as  the 
graver  proverbs  of  each  master  that  follow. 

It  begins : 

**  Here  begynyth  A  shorte  extracte,  and  telly th  how  ]?ar 
ware  sex  masterys  assemblede,  ande  eche  one  askede  o]7er 
quhat  thing  ]?ai  sholde  spek  of  gode,  and  all  pei  war  acordet 
to  spek  of  tribulacoun. 

"  The  fyrste  master  seyde,  fat  if  ony  thing  hade  bene  mor 
better  to  ony  man  lewynge  in  this  werlde  I>an  tribulacoun, 
god  wald  haue  gewyne  it  to  his  sone.  But  he  sey  wyell  that 
thar  was  no  better,  and  tharfor  he  gawe  it  hum,  and  mayde 
hume  to  soffer  moste  in  this  wrechede  worlde  than  euer  dyde 
ony  man,  or  euermore  shall. 

"  The  secunde  master  seyde,  ]?at  if  far  wer  ony  man  fat 
mycht  be  wyth-out  spote  of  sine,  as  god  was,  and  mycht 
levyn  bodely  firty  yheris  wyth-out  mete,  ande  also  were 
dewote  in  preyinge  at  he  mycht  speke  wyth  angele  in  fe 
erth,  as  dyde  mary  magdalene,  yit  mycht  he  not  deserve  in 
fat  lyffe  so  gret  meyde  as  A  man  deservith  in  suffring  of  A 
lytyll  tribulacoun. 

"  The  threde  master  seyde,  fat  if  the  moder  of  gode  and  all 
the  halowys  of  hewyn  preyd  for  a  man,  f ei  should  not  get  so 
gret  meyde  as  he  should  hymselfe  be  meknes  and  sufiEryng 
of  tribulacoun." 

Now  asking  you,  as  I  pass,  to  remember  that  I  have 
selected  this  extract,  hke  the  others,  with  the  further 
purpose  of  presently  contrasting  the  substance  of  it  with 
modern   utterances,   as  well    as   the   form   which   now 


20  The  English  Novel 

mainly  concerns  us  —  if  we  cut  short  this  search  after 
artistic  prose  in  our  earlier  literature,  and  come  down  at 
once  to  the  very  earliest  sign  of  a  true  feeling  for  the 
musical  movement  of  prose  sentences,  we  are  met  by 
the  fact,  which  I  hope  to  show  is  full  of  fruitful  sugges- 
tions upon  our  present  studies,  that  the  art  of  English 
prose  is  at  least  eight  hundred  years  younger  than  the 
art  of  English  verse.  For  in  coming  down  our  literature 
from  Caedmon — whom,  in  some  conflict  of  dates,  we 
can  safely  place  at  670  —  the  very  first  writer  I  find  who 
shows  a  sense  of  the  rhythmical  flow  and  gracious  music 
of  which  our  prose  is  so  richly  capable  is  Sir  Thomas 
Malory ;  and  his  one  work.  The  History  of  King  Arthur 
and  His  Knights  of  the  Round  Table y  dates  1469-70, 
exactly  eight  hundred  years  after  Caedmon's  poetic 
outburst. 

Recalling  our  extracts  just  read,  and  remembering  how 
ungainly  and  awkward  was  the  port  of  their  sentences, 
listen  for  a  moment  to  a  few  lines  from  Sir  Thomas 
Malory.  I  think  the  most  unmusical  ear,  the  most 
cursory  attention,  cannot  fail  to  discern  immediately 
how  much  more  flov/ing  and  smooth  is  the  movement 
of  this.     I  read  from  the  fifth  chapter  of  King  Arthur. 

"  And  King  Arthur  was  passing  wroth  for  the  hurt  of  Sir 
Griflet.  And  by  and  by  he  commanded  a  man  of  his  cham- 
ber that  his  best  horse  and  armor  be  without  the  city  on  to- 
morrow-day. Right  so  in  the  morning  he  met  with  his  man 
and  his  horse,  and  so  mounted  up  and  dressed  his  shield,  and 
took  his  spear,  and  bade  his  chamberlain  tarry  there  till  he 
came  again.*' 

Presently  he  meets  Merlin  and  they  go  on  together. 

"  So,  as  they  went  thus  talking,  they  came  to  the  fountain 
and  the  rich  pavihon  by  it.    Then  King  Arthur  was  ware 


The  Development  of  Personality        21 

where  a  knight  sat  all  armed  in  a  chair.  *  Sir  Knight,'  said 
King  Arthur, '  for  what  cause  abidest  thou  here  ?  that  there 
may  no  knight  ride  this  way  but  if  he  do  joust  with  thee  ? ' 
said  the  King.  *  I  rede  thee  leave  that  custom,'  said  King 
Arthur. 

" '  This  custom,'  said  the  knight, '  have  I  used  and  will 
use,  maugre  who  saith  nay;  and  who  is  grieved  with  my 
custom,  let  him  amend  it  that  will.' 

"  '  I  will  amend  it,'  said  King  Arthur.  '  And  I  shall  defend 
it,'  said  the  knight." 

(Observe  will  and  shall  here.) 


Here,  you  observe,  not  only  is  there  musical  flow  of 
single  sentences,  but  one  sentence  remembers  another 
and  proportions  itself  thereto  —  if  the  last  was  long,  this 
is  shorter  or  longer,  and  if  one  calls  for  a  certain  tune, 
the  next  calls  for  a  different  tune  —  and  we  have  not  only 
grace  but  variety.  In  this  variety  may  be  found  an  easy 
test  of  artistic  prose.  If  you  try  to  read  two  hundred 
lines  of  Chaucer's  Melibceus  or  his  ParsotCs  Tale  aloud, 
you  are  presently  oppressed  with  a  sense  of  bagpipish- 
ness  in  your  own  voice  which  becomes  intolerable ;  but 
you  can  read  Malory's  King  Arthur  aloud  from  begin- 
ning to  end  with  a  never-cloying  sense  of  proportion 
and  rhythmic  flow. 

I  wish  I  had  time  to  demonstrate  minutely  how  much 
of  the  relish  of  all  fine  prose  is  due  to  the  arrangement 
of  the  sentences  in  such  a  way  that  consecutive  sen- 
tences do  not  call  for  the  same  tune :  for  example,  if 
one  sentence  is  sharp  antithesis — you  know  the  well- 
marked  speech  tune  of  an  antithesis,  "  do  you  mean  this 
book,  or  do  you  mean  that  book?  "  —  you  must  be  care- 
ful in  the  next  sentences  to  vary  the  tune  from  that  of 
the  antithesis. 

In  the  prose  I  read  you  from  Chaucer  and  from  the 


22  The  English  Novel 

old  manuscript,  a  large  part  of  the  intolerableness  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  nearly  every  sentence  involves  the  tune 
of  an  aphorism  or  proverb,  and  the  iteration  of  the  same 
pitch-successions  in  the  voice  presently  becomes  weari- 
some. This  fault  —  of  the  succession  of  antithetic  ideas 
so  that  the  voice  becomes  weary  of  repeating  the  same 
contrariety  of  accents  —  I  can  illustrate  very  strikingly 
in  a  letter  which  I  happen  to  remember  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,  whom  I  have  found  to  be  a  great  sinner 
against  good  prose  in  this  particular. 

Here  is  part  of  a  letter  from  her  to  King  Edward  VI. 
concerning  a  portrait  of  herself  which  it  seems  the  king 
had  desired.  (Italicized  words  represent  antithetic 
accents.) 

"  Like  as  the  rich  man  that  daily  gathereth  riches  to  riches, 
and  to  one  bag  of  money  layeth  a  great  sort  till  it  come  to 
ififinite;  so  methinks  your  majesty,  not  being  sufficed  with 
so  many  benefits  and  gentleness  shewed  to  me  afore  this 
time,  doth  now  increase  them  in  asking  and  desiring  where 
you  may  bid  and  command,  requiring  a  thing  not  worthy  the 
desiring  for  itself,  but  jnade  worthy  for  your  highness'  re' 
quest.  My  picture  I  mean :  in  which,  if  the  inward  good 
mind  toward  your  grace  might  as  well  be  declared,  as  the 
outward  face  and  countenance  shall  be  seen,  I  would  not 
have  tarried  the  commandment  but  prevented  it,  nor  have 
been  the  last  to  grant,  but  the  first  to  offer  it." 

And  so  on.  You  observe  here  into  what  a  sing-song 
the  voice  must  fall :  if  you  abstract  the  words,  and  say 
over  the  tune,  it  is  continually :  tum-ty-ty  tum-ty-ty 
tum-ty ;    tum-ty-ty  tum-ty-ty  tum-ty. 

I  wish  also  that  it  lay  within  my  province  to  pass  on 
and  show  the  gradual  development  of  English  prose, 
through  Sir  Thomas  More,  Lord  Bemers,  and  Roger 
Ascham,  whom  we  may  assign  to  the  earlier  half  of  the 


The  Development  of  Personality        23 

sixteenth  century,  until  it  reaches  a  great  and  beautiful 
artistic  stage  in  the  prose  of  Fuller,  of  Hooker,  and  of 
Jeremy  Taylor. 

But  the  fact  which  I  propose  to  use  as  throwing  light 
on  the  novel  is  simply  the  lateness  of  English  prose  as 
compared  with  English  verse;  and  we  have  already 
sufficiently  seen  that  the  rise  of  our  prose  must  be  dated 
at  least  eight  centuries  after  that  of  our  formal  poetry. 

But  having  established  the  fact  that  English  prose  is 
so  much  later  in  development  than  English  verse,  the 
point  that  I  wish  to  make  in  this  connection  now 
requires  me  to  go  on  and  ask  why  this  is  so  ? 

Without  the  time  to  adduce  supporting  facts  from  other 
literatures,  and  indeed  wholly  unable  to  go  into  elaborate 
proof,  let  me  say  at  once  that  upon  examining  the  mat- 
ter it  seems  probable  that  the  whole  earlier  speech  of 
man  must  have  been  rhythmical,  and  that  in  point  of  fact 
we  began  with  verse  which  is  much  simpler  in  rhythm 
than  any  prose,  and  that  we  departed  from  this  regular 
rhythmic  utterance  into  more  and  more  complex  utterance 
just  according  as  the  advance  of  complexity  in  language 
and  feeling  required  the  freer  forms  of  prose. 

To  adduce  a  single  consideration  leading  toward  this 
view  :  reflect  for  a  moment  that  the  very  breath  of  every 
man  necessarily  divides  off  his  words  into  rhythmic 
periods :  the  average  rate  of  a  man's  breath  being  1 7  to 
20  respirations  in  a  minute.  Taking  the  faster  rate  as  the 
more  probable  one  in  speaking,  the  man  would,  from  the 
periodic  necessity  of  refilling  the  lungs,  divide  his  words 
into  twenty  groups,  equal  in  time,  every  minute,  and  if 
these  syllables  were  equally  pronounced  at,  say,  about 
the  »ate  of  200  a  minute,  we  should  have  ten  syllables 
in  each  group,  each  ten  syllables  occupying  ( in  the  ag- 
gregate at  least)  the  same  time  with  any  other  ten  syllables, 
that  is,  the  time  of  one  breath. 


24  The  English  Novel 

But  this  is  just  the  rhythm  of  our  English  blank  verse, 
in  essential  type  :  ten  syllables  to  the  line  or  group  :  and 
our  primitive  talker  is  speaking  in  the  true  English  heroic 
rhythm.  Thus  it  may  be  that  our  dear  friend  M.  Jour- 
dain  was  not  so  far  wrong  after  all  in  his  astonishment 
at  finding  that  he  had  been  speaking  prose  all  his  life :  it 
would  seem  at  any  rate  that  man,  the  race,  has  not  been 
speaking  prose  all  his  life. 


The  Development  of  Personality       25 


n 


Perhaps  I  ought  here  carefully  to  state  that  in  pro- 
pounding the  idea  that  the  whole  common  speech  of 
early  man  may  have  been  rhythmical  through  the 
operation  of  uniformity  of  syllables  and  periodicity  of 
breath,  and  that  for  this  reason  prose,  which  is  practi- 
cally verse  of  a  very  complex  rhythm,  was  naturally 
a  later  development;  in  propounding  this  idea,  I  say, 
I  do  not  mean  to  declare  that  the  prehistoric  man, 
after  a  hard  day's  work  on  a  flint  arrow-head  at  his 
stone -quarry,  would  dance  back  to  his  dwelling  in  the 
most  beautiful  rhythmic  figures,  would  lay  down  his 
palaeolithic  axe  to  a  slow  song,  and,  striking  an  operatic 
attitude,  would  call  out  to  his  wife  to  leave  off  fishing  in 
the  stream  and  bring  him  a  stone  mug  of  water  —  all  in  a 
most  sublime  and  impassioned  flight  of  poetry.  What 
I  do  mean  to  say  is  that  if  the  prehistoric  man's  syllables 
were  uniform,  and  his  breath  periodic,  then  the  rhythmi- 
cal results  described  would  follow.  Here  let  me  at  once 
illustrate  this,  and  advance  a  step  towards  my  final  point 
in  this  connection,  by  reminding  you  how  easily  the  most  * 
commonplace  utterances  in  modem  English,  particularly 
when  couched  mainly  in  words  of  one  syllable,  fall  into 
quite  respectable  verse-rhythms.  I  might  illustrate  this, 
but  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  has  already  done  it  for  me  :  — 
"  I  put  my  hat  upon  my  head  and  walked  into  the  Strand, 
and  there  I  met  another  man  whose  hat  was  in  his  hand." 
We  have  only  to  arrange  this  in  proper  form  in  order  to 


26  The  English  Novel 

see  that  it  is  a  stanza  of  verse  quite  perfect  as  to  all 
technical  requirement. 

♦*  I  put  my  hat  upon  my  head, 
And  walked  into  the  Strand, 
And  there  I  met  another  man, 
Whose  hat  was  in  his  hand." 

Now  let  me  ask  you  to  observe  precisely  what 
happens  when  by  adding  words  here  and  there  in  this 
verse  we  more  and  more  obscure  its  verse  form  and 
bring  out  its  prose  form.  Suppose  for  example  we 
here  write  **  hastily,"  and  here  "  rushed  forth,"  and  here 
"encountered,"  and  here  **  hanging,"  so  as  to  make  it  read  : 

"  I  hastily  put  my  hat  upon  my  head. 
And  rushed  forth  into  the  Strand, 
And  there  I  encountered  another  man, 
Whose  hat  was  hanging  in  his  hand." 

Here  we  have  made  unmitigated  prose,  but  how? 
Remembering  that  the  original  verse  was  in  iambic  4's 
and  3's, 

I  put  I  my  hat  |  up-on  |  my  head  |  , 

—  by  putting  in  the  word  "hastily  "  in  the  first  line, 
we  have  not  destroyed  the  rhythm :  we  still  have  the 
rhythmic  sequence,  "  my  hat  upon  my  head,"  unchanged ; 
but  we  have  merely  added  another  brief  rhythmus  — 
namely  that  of  the  word  "  hastily,"  which  we  may  call  a 

modem  or  logaoedic  dactyl  (hastily) .  That  is  to  say : 
instead  now  of  leaving  our  first  line  all  iambic,  we  have 
varied  that  rhythmus  with  another ;  and  in  so  doing  have 
converted  our  verse  into  prose.  Similarly  in  the  second 
line,  "  rushed  forth,"  which  an  English  tongue  would  here 
deliver  as  a  spondee  —  rushed  forth  |  —  varies  the  rhythm 
by  "Jais  spondaic  intervention,  but  still  leaves  us  the  orig- 


The  Development  of  Personality       27 

inal  rhythmic  cluster,  "  into  the  Strand."  So  of  the  other 
introduced  words,  "  encountered  "  and  "  hanging  "  :  each 
has  its  own  rhythm  —  for  an  English  tongue  always 
gives  these  words  with  definite  time-relations  between 
the  syllables,  that  is,  in  rhythm.  Therefore,  in  order  to 
make  prose  out  of  this  verse,  we  have  not  destroyed  the 
rhythms  :  we  have  added  to  them.  We  have  not  made  / 
it  formless :  we  have  made  it  contain  more  forms. 

Now  in  this  analysis,  which  I  have  tried  to  bring  to 
its  very  simplest  terms,  I  have  presented  what  seems  to 
me  the  true  genesis  of  prose,  and  have  set  up  a  distinc- 
tion which,  though  it  may  appear  abstract  and  insignifi- 
cant at  present,  we  shall  presently  see  lies  at  the  bottom 
of  some  most  remarkable  and  pernicious  fallacies  concern- 
ing literature.  That  distinction  is :  that  the  relation  of 
prose  to  verse  is  not  the  relation  of  the  formless  to  the 
formal :  it  is  the  relation  of  more  forms  to  fewer  forms.  It 
is  this  relation  which  makes  prose  a  freer  form  than 
verse. 

When  we  are  writing  in  verse,  if  we  have  started  the 
line  with  an  iambus  (say)  then  our  next  words  or  sylla- 
bles must  make  an  iambus,  and  we  are  confined  to  that 
form ;  but  if  in  prose,  our  next  word  need  not  be  an 
iambus  because  the  first  was,  but  may  be  any  one  of 
several  possible  rhythmic  forms  :  thus,  while  in  verse  we 
must  use  one  form,  in  prose  we  may  use  many  forms : 
and  just  to  the  extent  of  these  possible  forms  is  prose 
freer  than  verse.  We  shall  find  occasion  presently  to 
remember  that  prose  is  freer  than  verse,  not  because 
prose  is  formless  while  verse  is  formal,  but  because  any 
given  sequence  of  prose  has  more  forms  in  it  than  a 
sequence  of  verse. 

Here  —  reserving  to  a  later  place  the  special  applica- 
tion of  all  this  to  the  novel— I  have  brought  my  first 


28  The  English  Novel 

general  point  to  a  stage  where  it  constitutes  the  basis  of 
the  second  one.  You  have  already  heard  much  of 
"forms  "  —  of  the  verse-form,  the  prose-form,  of  form  in 
art,  and  the  like.  Now,  in  the  course  of  a  considerable 
experience  in  what  Shakspere  sadly  calls  "pubHc 
means,"  I  have  found  no  matter  upon  which  wider  or 
more  harmful  misconceptions  exist  among  people  of 
culture,  and  particularly  among  us  Americans,  than 
this  matter  of  the  true  function  of  form  in  art,  of  the 
true  relation  of  science — which  we  may  call  the  knowl- 
edge of  forms  —  to  art,  and  most  especially  of  these 
functions  and  relations  in  literary  art.  These  miscon- 
ceptions have  flowered  out  into  widely  different  shapes. 

In  one  direction,  for  example,  we  find  a  large  number 
of  timorous  souls  who  believe  that  science,  in  explaining 
everything  —  as  they  singularly  fancy  —  will  destroy  the 
possibility  of  poetry,  of  the  novel,  in  short  of  all  works 
of  the  imagination:  the  idea  seeming  to  be  that  the 
imagination  always  requires  the  hall  of  life  to  be 
darkened  before  it  display  its  magic,  like  the  modern 
spiritualistic  stance-givers  who  can  do  nothing  with  the 
rope-tying  and  the  guitars  unless  the  lights  are  put  out. 

Another  form  of  the  same  misconception  goes  pre- 
cisely to  the  opposite  extreme,  and  declares  that  the 
advance  of  science  with  its  incidents  is  going  to  give  a 
great  new  revolutionized  democratic  literature  which  will 
wear  a  slouch  hat,  and  have  its  shirt  open  at  the  bosom, 
and  generally  riot  in  a  complete  independence  of  form. 

And  finally  —  to  mention  no  more  than  a  third  phase 
—  we  may  consider  the  original  misconception  to  have 
reached  a  climax  which  is  at  once  absurd  and  infernal 
in  a  professedly  philosophical  work  called  Le  Roman 
Experimental^  recently  published  by  M. .  Emile  Zola, 
gravely  defending  his  peculiar  novels  as  the  records  of 


The  Development  of  Personality        29 

scientific  experiments  and  declaring  that  the  whole  field 
of  imaginative  effort  must  follow  his  lead. 

Now  if  any  of  these  beliefs  are  true  we  are  wickedly 
wasting  our  time  here  in  studying  the  novel  —  at  least 
any  other  novels  except  M.  Zola's —  and  we  ought  to  look 
to  ourselves.  Seriously,  I  do  not  believe  I  could  render 
you  a  greater  service  than  by  here  arraying  such  contri- 
bution as  I  can  make  towards  some  firm,  clear  and  pious 
conceptions  as  to  this  matter  of  form,  of  science,  in  art, 
before  briefly  considering  these  three  concrete  errors  I 
have  enumerated  —  to  wit,  the  belief  ( i )  that  science  will 
destroy  all  poetry,  all  novel-writing  and  all  imaginative 
work  generally;  (2)  that  science  (as  Walt  Whitman 
would  have  it)  will  simply  destroy  the  old  imaginative 
products  and  build  up  a  new  formless  sort  of  imaginative 
product  in  its  stead ;  and  (3)  that  science  will  absorb 
into  itself  all  imaginative  effort  (as  Zola  believes)  so  that 
every  novel  will  be  merely  the  plain  unvarnished  record 
of  a  scientific  experiment  in  passion.  Let  me  submit 
two  or  three  principles  whose  steady  light  will  leave,  it 
seems  to  me,  but  little  space  for  perplexity  as  to  these 
diverse  claims. 

Start,  then,  in  the  first  place,  with  a  definite  recalling 
to  yourself  of  the  province  of  form  throughout  our  whole 
daily  life.  Here  we  find  a  striking  consensus,  at  least  in 
spirit,  between  the  deliverances  of  the  sternest  science 
and  of  the  straitest  orthodoxy.  The  latter  on  the  one 
hand  tells  us  that  in  the  beginning  the  earth  was  without 
form  and  void  ;  and  it  is  only  after  the  earth  is  formulated 
—  after  the  various  forms  of  the  lights,  of  land  and  water, 
bird,  fish  and  man  appear — it  is  only  then  that  life  and 
use  and  art  and  relation  and  religion  become  possible. 
What  we  call  the  creation,  therefore,  is  not  the  making 
out  of  nothing,  but  it  is  the  giving  of  form  to  a  some- 


30  The  English  Novel 

thing  which,  though  existing,  existed  to  no  purpose 
because  it  had  no  form. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  widest  generalizations  of  science 
bring  us  practically  to  the  same  view.  Science  would 
seem  fairly  to  have  reduced  all  this  host  of  phenomena 
which  we  call  the  world  into  a  congeries  of  motions  in 
many  forms.  What  we  know  by  our  senses  is  simply 
such  forms  of  these  motions  as  our  senses  have  a  corre- 
lated capacity  for.  The  atoms  of  this  substance,  moving 
in  orbits  too  narrow  for  human  vision,  impress  my  sense 
with  a  certain  property  which  I  call  hardness  or  resist- 
ance, this  "  hardness  "  being  simply  our  name  for  one 
form  of  atom-motion  when  impressing  itself  on  the 
human  sense.  So  color,  shape,  &c. ;  these  are  our  names 
representing  a  correlation  between  certain  other  forms  of 
motion  and  our  senses. 

Regarding  the  whole  universe  thus  as  a  great  con- 
geries of  forms  of  motion,  we  may  now  go  further  and 
make  for  ourselves  a  scientific  and  useful  generalization, 
reducing  a  great  number  of  facts  to  a  convenient  com- 
mon denominator  by  considering  that  Science  is  the 
knowledge  of  these  forms,  that  Art  is  the  creation  of 
beautiful  forms,  that  Religion  is  the  faith  in  the  infinite 
Form-giver  and  in  that  infinity  of  forms  which  many 
things  lead  us  to  believe  as  existing,  but  existing  beyond 
any  present  correlative  capacities  of  our  senses,  —  and 
finally  that  Life  is  the  control  of  all  these  forms  to  the 
satisfaction  of  our  human  needs. 

And  now  advancing  a  step :  when  we  remember  how 
all  accounts,  the  scientific,  the  religious,  the  historical, 
agree  that  the  progress  of  things  is  from  chaos  or  form- 
lessness to  form,  —  and,  as  we  saw  in  the  case  of  verse 
and  prose,  —  afterwards  from  the  one-formed  to  the 
many-formed,  we  are  not  disturbed  by  any  shouts,  how- 


The  Development  of  Personality       31 

ever  stentorian,  of  a  progress  that  professes  to  be  win- 
ning freedom  by  substituting  formlessness  for  form :  we 
know  that  the  ages  are  rolling  the  other  way,  —  who 
shall  stop  those  wheels  ?  We  know  that  what  they  really 
do  whc  profess  to  substitute  formlessness  for  form  is  to 
substitute  a  bad  form  for  a  good  one,  or  an  ugly  form 
for  a  beautiful  one.  Do  not  dream  of  getting  rid  of 
form :  your  most  cutting  stroke  at  it  but  gives  us  two 
forms  for  one.  For,  in  a  sense  which  adds  additional 
reverence  to  the  original  meaning  of  those  words,  we 
may  devoutly  say  that  in  form  we  live  and  move  and 
have  our  being.  How  strange,  then,  the  furtive  appre- 
hension of  danger  lying  behind  too  much  knowledge  of 
form,  too  much  technic,  which  one  is  amazed  to  find 
prevailing  so  greatly  in  our  own  country. 

But,  advancing  a  further  step  from  the  particular  con- 
sideration of  science  as  the  knowledge  of  forms,  let  us 
come  to  the  fact  that  as  all  art  is  a  congeries  of  forms, 
each  art  must  have  its  own  peculiar  science  :  and  always 
we  have,  in  a  true  sense,  the  art  of  an  art  and  the  science 
of  that  art.  For  example :  correlative  to  the  art  of 
music  we  have  the  general  science  of  music,  which 
indeed  consists  of  several  quite  separate  sciences.  If  a 
man  desire  to  become  a  musical  composer,  he  is  abso- 
lutely obliged  to  learn  ( i )  the  science  of  Musical  Form, 
(2)  the  science  of  Harmony,  and  (3)  the  science  of 
Orchestration  or  Instrumentation. 

The  science  of  musical  form  concerns  this  sort  of 
matter,  for  instance.  A  symphony  has  generally  four 
great  divisions,  called  movements,  separated  usually  from 
each  other  by  a  considerable  pause.  Each  of  these 
movements  has  a  law  of  formation :  it  consists  of  two 
main  subjects,  or  melodies,  and  a  modulation-part.  The 
sequence  of  these  subjects,  the  method  of  varying  them 


32  The  English  Novel 

by  causing  now  one  and  now  another  of  the  instru- 
ments to  come  forward  and  play  the  subject  in  hand 
while  subordinate  parts  are  assigned  to  the  others,  the 
interplay  of  the  two  subjects  in  the  modulation-part, 
—  all  this  is  the  subject-matter  of  a  science  which  every 
composer  must  laboriously  learn. 

But  again:  he  must  learn  the  great  science  of  har- 
mony, and  of  that  wonderful  tonality  which  has  caused 
our  music  to  be  practically  a  different  art  from  what  pre- 
ceding ages  called  music :  this  science  of  harmony  hav- 
ing its  own  body  of  classifications  and  formulated  laws 
just  as  the  science  of  geology  has,  and  a  voluminous 
literature  of  its  own.  Again,  he  must  painfully  learn  the 
range  and  capacities  of  each  orchestral  instrument,  —  lest 
he  write  passages  for  the  violin  which  no  violin  can  play, 
&c.,  —  and  further,  the  particular  ideas  which  seem  to 
associate  themselves  with  the  tone- color  of  each  instru- 
ment, as  the  idea  of  women's  voices  with  the  clarinet, 
the  idea  of  tenderness  and  childlikeness  with  the  oboe, 
and  so  on.  This  is  not  all :  the  musical  composer  may 
indeed  write  a  symphony  if  he  has  these  three  sciences 
of  music  well  in  hand ;  but  a  fourth  science  of  music, 
namely,  the  physics  of  music,  or  musical  acoustics,  has 
now  grown  to  such  an  extent  that  every  composer  will 
find  himself  lame  without  a  knowledge  of  it. 

And  so  the  art  of  painting  has  its  correlative  science 

of  painting,  involving  laws  of  optics,  and  of  form ;  the  art 

of  sculpture,  its  correlative  science  of  sculpture,  involving 

the  science  of  human  anatomy,  &c. ;  and  each  one  of  the 

/  literary  arts  has  its  correlative  science  —  the  art  of  verse 

V  its  science  of  verse,  the  art  of  prose  its  science  of  prose. 

Lastly,  we  all  know  that  no  amount  of  genius  will  supply 

-  the  lack  of  science  in  art.     Phidias  may  be  all  afire  with 

the  conception  of  Jove,  but  unless  he  is  a  scientific  man 


The  Development  of  Personality       ;^;^ 

lo  the  extent  of  a  knowledge  of  anatomy,  he  is  no  better 
artist  than  Strephon  who  cannot  mould  the  handle  of  a 
goblet.  What  is  Beethoven's  genius  until  Beethoven  has 
become  a  scientific  man  to  the  extent  of  knowing  the 
sciences  of  Musical  Form,  of  Orchestration,  and  of 
Harmony? 

But  now  if  I  go  on  and  ask  what  would  be  the  worth 
of  Shakspere's  genius  unless  he  were  a  scientific  man  to 
the  extent  of  knowing  the  science  of  English  verse,  or 
what  would  be  George  Eliot's  genius  unless  she  knew 
the  science  of  English  prose  or  the  science  of  novel- 
writing,  a  sort  of  doubtful  stir  arises,  and  it  would  seem 
as  if  a  suspicion  of  some  vague  esoteric  difference  be- 
tween the  relation  of  the  literary  arts  to  their  correlative 
sciences  and  the  relation  of  other  arts  to  their  correlative 
sciences  influenced  the  general  mind. 

I  am  so  unwilling  you  should  think  me  here  fighting 
a  mere  man  of  straw  who  has  been  arranged  with  a  view 
to  the  convenience  of  knocking  him  down :  and  I  find 
such  mournful  evidences  of  the  complete  misconception 
of  form,  of  literary  science,  in  our  literature  :  that,  with  a 
reluctance  which  every  one  will  understand,  I  am  going 
to  draw  upon  a  personal  experience,  to  show  the  extent 
of  that  misconception. 

Some  of  you  may  remember  that  a  part  of  the  course 
of  lectures  which  your  present  lecturer  delivered  here 
last  year  were  afterwards  published  in  book-form,  under 
the  title  of  TAe  Science  of  English  Verse.  Happening 
in  the  publisher's  office  some  time  afterwards,  I  was 
asked  if  I  would  care  to  see  the  newspaper  notices  and 
criticisms  of  the  book,  whereof  the  publishers  had  col- 
lected a  great  bundle.  Most  curious  to  see  if  some 
previous  ideas  I  had  formed  as  to  the  general  relation 
between  Uterary  art  and  science  would  be  confirmed,  I 

3 


I 


34  The  English  Novel 

read  these  notices  with  great  interest.  Not  only  were 
my  suspicions  confirmed :  but  it  is  perfectly  fair  to  say 
that  nine  out  of  ten,  even  of  those  which  most  generously 
treated  the  book  in  hand,  treated  it  upon  the  general 
theory  that  a  work  on  the  science  of  verse  must  neces- 
sarily be  a  collection  of  rules  for  making  verses.  Now 
not  one  of  these  writers  would  have  treated  a  work  on 
the  science  of  geology  as  a  collection  of  rules  for  making 
rocks ;  or  a  work  on  the  science  of  anatomy  as  a  collec- 
tion of  rules  for  making  bones  or  for  procuring  cadavers. 
In  point  of  fact,  a  book  of  rules  for  making  verses  might 
very  well  be  written,  but  then  it  would  be  a  hand-book 
of  the  art  of  verse,  and  would  take  the  whole  science  of 
verse  for  granted,  —  like  an  instruction-book  for  the 
piano,  or  the  like. 

If  we  should  find  the  whole  critical  body  of  a  continent 
treating  (say)  Prof.  Huxley's  late  work  on  the  crayfish  as 
really  a  cookery-book,  intended  to  spread  intelligent  ideas 
upon  the  best  methods  of  preparing  shell-fish  for  the  table, 
we  should  certainly  suspect  something  wrong :  but  this 
is  precisely  parallel  with  the  mistake  already  mentioned. 

But  even  when  the  functions  of  form,  of  science,  in 
literary  art  have  been  comprehended,  one  is  amazed  to 
find  among  literary  artists  themselves  a  certain  apprehen- 
sion of  danger  in  knowing  too  much  of  the  forms  of  art. 
A  valued  friend  who  has  won  a  considerable  place  in 
contemporary  authorship,  in  writing  me  not  long  ago, 
said,  after  much  abstract  and  impersonal  admission  of  a 
possible  science  of  verse  —  in  the  way  that  one  admits 
there  may  be  griffins  but  feels  no  great  concern  about 
it  —  "  as  for  me  I  would  rather  continue  to  write  verse  from 
pure  instinct ^^ 

This  fallacy  —  of  supposing  that  we  do  a  thing  by 
instinct  simply  because  we  learned  to  do  it  unsystematic- 


The  Development  of  Personality       35 

ally  and  without  formal  teaching  —  seems  a  curious 
enough  climax  to  the  misconceptions  of  literary  science. 
You  have  only  to  reflect  a  moment  in  order  to  see  that 
not  a  single  line  of  verse  was  ever  written  by  instinct 
alone  since  the  world  began.  For  —  to  go  no  farther  — 
the  most  poetically- instinctive  child  is  obliged  at  least  to^ 
learn  the  science  of  language  —  the  practical  relation  of 
noun  and  verb  and  connective  —  before  the  crudest  line  of 
verse  can  be  written ;  and  since  no  child  talks  by  instinct, 
since  every  child  has  to  learn  from  others  every  word  it 
uses, — with  an  amount  of  diligence  and  of  study  which 
is  really  stupendous  when  we  think  of  it  —  what  wild  ab- 
surdity to  forget  these  years  passed  by  the  child  in  learn- 
ing even  the  rudiments  of  the  science  of  language  which 
must  be  well  in  hand,  mind  you,  before  even  the  rudi- 
ments of  the  science  of  verse  can  be  learned  —  what  wild 
absurdity  to  fancy  that  one  is  writing  verse  by  instinct 
when  even  the  language  of  verse,  far  from  being  instinc- 
tive, had  to  be  painfully,  if  unsystematically,  learned  as 
a  science. 

Once,  for  all,  remembering  the  dignity  of  form  as  we 
have  traced  it,  remembering  the  relations  of  Science  as 
the  knowledge  of  forms,  of  Art  as  the  creator  of  beautiful 
forms,  of  Religion  as  the  aspiration  towards  unknown 
forms  and  the  unknown  Form-giver,  let  us  abandon  this 
unworthy  attitude  towards  form,  towards  science,  towards 
technic,  in  literary  art,  which  has  so  long  sapped  our 
literary  endeavor. 

The  writer  of  verse  is  afraid  of  having  too  much  form, 
of  having  too  much  technic ;  he  dreads  it  will  Interfere 
with  his  spontaneity.  No  more  decisive  confession  of 
weakness  can  be  made.  It  is  only  cleverness  and  small 
talent  which  is  afraid  of  its  spontaneity ;  the  genius,  the 
great  artist,  is  forever  ravenous  after  new  forms,  after 


^6  The  English  Novel 

technic ;  he  will  follow  you  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  if 
you  will  enlarge  his  artistic  science,  if  you  will  give  him 
a  fresh  form.  For  indeed  genius,  the  great  artist,  never 
works  in  the  frantic  vein  vulgarly  supposed ;  a  large  part 
of  the  work  of  the  poet,  for  example,  is  selective :  a 
dozen  ideas  in  a  dozen  forms  throng  to  his  brain  at  once, 
he  must  choose  the  best ;  even  in  the  extremes!  heat  and 
sublimity  of  his  rapius  he  must  preserve  a  god-like  calm, 
and  order  thus  and  so,  and  keep  the  rule  so  that  he 
shall  to  the  end  be  master  of  his  art  and  not  be  mastered 
by  his  art. 

Charlotte  Cushman  used  often  to  tell  me  that  when 
she  was,  as  the  phrase  is,  carried  out  of  herself,  she 
never  acted  well :  she  must  have  her  inspiration,  she 
must  be  in  a  true  raptus^  but  the  raptus  must  be  well 
in  hand,  and  she  must  retain  the  consciousness,  at  once 
sublime  and  practical,  of  every  act. 

There  is  an  old  aphorism  —  it  is  twelve  hundred  years 
old  —  which  covers  all  this  ground  of  the  importance  of 
technic,  of  science,  in  the  literary  art,  with  such  complete- 
ness and  compactness  that  it  always  affects  me  like  a 
poem.  It  was  uttered,  indeed,  by  a  poet, — and  a  rare 
one  he  must  have  been, — an  old  Armorican  named  Herv6, 
of  whom  all  manner  of  beautiful  stories  have  survived. 
This  aphorism  is :  "  He  who  will  not  answer  to  the 
rudder,  must  answer  to  the  rocks."  If  any  of  you  have 
read  that  wonderful  description  of  shipwreck  on  these 
same  Armorican  rocks  which  occurs  in  the  autobiography 
of  Millet,  the  painter,  and  which  was  recently  quoted  in 
a  number  of  Scribner's  Magazine^  you  can  realize  that 
one  who  lived  in  that  old  Armorica  —  the  modern  Brit- 
tany from  which  Millet  comes  —  knew  full  well  what  it 
meant  to  answer  to  the  rocks. 

Now  it  is  precisely  this  form,  this  science,  this  technic. 


The  Development  of  Personality       37 

which  is  the  rudder  of  the  Hterary  artist,  whether  he 
work  at  verse  or  novels.  I  wish  it  were  everywhere 
written,  even  in  the  souls  of  all  our  young  American 
writers,  that  he  who  will  not  answer  to  the  rudder  shall 
answer  to  the  rocks.  This  was  the  belief  of  the  greatest 
literary  artist  our  language  has  ever  produced. 

We  have  direct  contemporary  testimony  that  Shaks- 
pere  was  supremely  solicitous  in  this  matter  of  form. 
Ben  Jonson,  in  that  hearty  testimonial,  "  To  the  Mem- 
ory of  My  Beloved,  the  Author,  Mr.  William  Shakspeare, 
and  What  He  Hath  Left  Us,"  which  was  prefixed  to  the 
edition  of  1623,  says,  after  praises  which  are  lavish  even 
for  an  Elizabethan  eulogy : 

"  Yet  must  I  not  give  Nature  all :  thy  art," 
(meaning  here  thy  technic,  thy  care  of  form,  thy  science) 

"  My  gentle  Shakspeare,  must  enjoy  a  part ; 

For  though  the  poet's  matter  Nature  be. 
His  art  doth  give  the  fashion ;   and  that  he 

"Who  casts  to  write  a  living  line  must  sweat, 
(Such  as  thine  are)  and  strike  the  second  heat 

Upon  the  Muses'  anvil ;  turn  the  same 
(And  himself  with  it)  that  he  thinks  to  frame ; 

Or  for  the  laurel  he  may  gain  a  scorn, 
For  a  good poefs  made  as  well  as  born, 

And  such  wert  thou.     Look  how  the  father's  face 
Lives  in  his  issue,  even  so  the  race 

Of  Shakespeare's  mind  and  manners  brightly  shines 
In  his  well-turned  and  true-filid  lines. 

In  each  of  which  he  seems  to  shake  a  lance. 
As  brandished  at  the  eyes  of  Ignorance.'* 

No  fear  with  Shakspere  of  damaging  his  spontaneity : 
he  shakes  a  lance  at  the  eyes  of  Ignorance  in  every  line. 

With  these  views  of  the  progress  of  forms  in  general, 
of  the  relations  of  Science  —  or  the  knowledge  of  all  forms 
—  to  Art,  or  the  creation  of  beautiful  forms,  we  are  pre- 


38  The  English  Novel 

pared,  I  think,  to  maintain  much  equilibrium  in  the 
midst  of  the  discordant  cries,  already  mentioned,  ( i )  of 
those  who  believe  that  Science  will  destroy  all  literary 
art,  (2)  of  those  who  believe  with  Whitman  that  art  is  to 
advance  by  becoming  democratic  and  formless,  (3)  and 
lastly  of  those  who  think  that  the  future  novelist  is  to 
enter  the  service  of  science  as  a  poHce- reporter  in  ordinary 
for  the  information  of  current  sociology. 

Let  us  therefore  inquire  if  it  is  really  true  —  as  I  am 
told  is  much  believed  in  Germany,  and  as  I  have  seen  not 
unfrequently  hinted  in  the  way  of  timorous  apprehension 
in  our  own  country  —  that  science  is  to  aboUsh  the  poet 
and  the  novel-writer  and  all  imaginative  literature.  It  is 
surprising  that  in  all  the  discussions  upon  this  subject  the 
matter  has  been  treated  as  belonging  solely  to  the  future. 
But  surely  life  is  too  short  for  the  folly  of  arguing  from 
prophecy  when  we  can  argue  from  history :  and  it  seems 
to  me  this  question  is  determined.  As  matter  of  fact, 
science  (to  confine  our  view  to  English  science)  has  been 
already  advancing  with  prodigious  strides  for  two  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years,  and  side  by  side  with  it  English 
poetry  has  been  advancing  for  the  same  period.  Surely 
whatever  effect  science  has  upon  poetry  can  be  traced 
during  this  long  companionship.  While  Hooke  and 
Wilkins  and  Newton  and  Horrox  and  the  Herschels  and 
Franklin  and  Davy  and  Faraday  and  the  Darwins  and 
Dalton  and  Huxley  and  many  more  have  been  penetrat- 
ing into  physical  nature,  Dryden,  Pope,  Byron,  Burns, 
Wordsworth,  Keats,  Tennyson,  Emerson,  Longfellow, 
have  been  singing;  while  gravitation,  oxygen,  electro- 
magnetism,  the  atomic  theory,  the  spectroscope,  the  siren, 
are  being  evolved,  the  Ode  to  St.  Ceciliay  the  Essay  on 
Matif  Manfred^  A  marCs  a  man  for  a^  that^  the  Ode  on 
Immortality f  In  Memoriam,  the   Ode  to  a  NightingaUf 


The  Development  of  Personality       39 

Brahma^  The  Psalm  of  Life ,  are  being  written.  If  indeed 
we  go  over  into  Germany,  there  is  Goethe,  at  once  pursu- 
ing science  and  poetry. 

If  we  examine  the  course  and  progress  of  this  poetry, 
bom  thus  within  the  very  grasp  and  maw  of  this  terri- 
ble science,  it  seems  to  me  that  we  find — as  to  the 
substance  of  poetry  —  a  steadily  increasing  confidence  and 
joy  in  the  mission  of  the  poet,  in  the  sacredness  of  faith 
and  love  and  duty  and  friendship  and  marriage,  and  in 
the  sovereign  fact  of  man's  personaUty ;  while  as  to  the 
form  of  the  poetry,  we  find  that  just  as  science  has  pruned 
our  faith  (to  make  it  more  fruitful)  so  it  has  pruned  our 
poetic  form  and  technic,  cutting  away  much  unproductive 
wood  and  efflorescence  and  creating  finer  reserves  and 
richer  yields.  Since  it  would  be  simply  impossible  in 
the  space  of  these  lectures  to  illustrate  this  by  any 
detailed  view  of  all  the  poets  mentioned,  let  us  confine 
ourselves  to  one,  Alfred  Tennyson,  and  let  us  inquire  how 
it  fares  with  him.  Certainly  no  more  favorable  selection 
could  be  made  for  those  who  believe  in  the  destructive- 
ness  of  science.  Here  is  a  man  bom  in  the  midst  of  sci- 
entific activity,  brought  up  and  intimate  with  the  freest 
thinkers  of  his  time,  himself  a  notable  scientific  pursuer 
of  botany,  and  saturated  by  his  reading  with  all  the  sci- 
entific conceptions  of  his  age.  If  science  is  to  sweep 
away  the  silliness  of  faith  and  love,  to  destroy  the  whole 
field  of  the  imagination  and  make  poetry  folly,  it  is  a 
miracle  if  Tennyson  escape.  But  if  we  look  into  his  own 
words  this  miracle  beautifully  transacts  itself  before  our 
eyes.  Suppose  we  inquire  :  Has  science  cooled  this  poet's 
love  ?    We  are  answered  in  No.  60  of  In  Memoriam, 

**  If,  in  thy  second  state  sublime, 

Thy  ransomed  reason  change  replies 
With  all  the  circle  of  the  wise, 
The  perfect  flower  of  human  time  \ 


40  The  English  Novel 

"  And  if  thou  cast  thine  eyes  below, 

How  dimly  character'd  and  slight, 
How  dwarf  d  a  growth  of  cold  and  night, 
How  blanch'd  with  darkness  must  I  grow  I 

"  Yet  turn  thee  to  the  doubtful  shore, 

Where  thy  first  form  was  made  a  man, 
I  loved  thee.  Spirit,  and  love,  nor  can 
The  soul  of  Shakspeare  love  thee  more." 

Here  is  precisely  the  same  loving  gospel  that  Shakspere 
himself  used  to  preach,  in  that  series  of  sonnets  which 
we  may  call  his  In  Memoriam  to  his  friend :  the  same 
loving  tenacity,  unchanged  by  three  hundred  years  of 
science.  It  is  interesting  to  compare  this  No.  60  of 
Tennyson's  poem  with  Sonnet  32  of  Shakspere's  series, 
and  note  how  both  preach  the  supremacy  of  love  over 
style  or  fashion. 

"  If  thou  survive  my  well-contented  day, 
When  that  churl  Death  my  bones  with  dust  shall  cover, 
And  shalt  by  fortune  once  more  re-survey 
These  poor  rude  lines  of  thy  deceased  lover, 
Compare  them  with  the  bettering  of  the  time ; 
And  though  they  be  outstripped  by  every  pen, 
Reserve  them  for  my  love,  not  for  their  rhyme, 
Exceeded  by  the  height  of  happier  men. 
O  then  vouchsafe  me  but  this  loving  thought : 

*  Had  my  friend's  muse  grown  with  this  growing  age, 
A  dearer  birth  than  this  his  love  had  brought, 
To  march  in  ranks  of  better  equipage : 
But  since  he  died,  and  poets  better  prove, 
Theirs  for  their  style  I'll  read,  his  for  his  love.'  '* 

Returning  to  Tennyson  :  has  science  cooled  his  yearn- 
ing for  human  friendship?  We  are  answered  in  No.  90 
of  In  Memoriam,  When  was  ever  such  an  invocation  to 
a  dead  friend  to  return  ! 


The  Development  of  Personality       41 

"  When  rosy  plumelets  tuft  the  larch, 

And  rarely  pipes  the  mounted  thrush ; 
Or  underneath  the  barren  bush 
Flits  by  the  sea-blue  bird  of  March ; 

"Come,  wear  the  form  by  which  I  know 

Thy  spirit  in  time  among  thy  peers ; 
The  hope  of  unaccomplish'd  years 
Be  large  and  lucid  round  thy  brow. 

"  When  summer's  hourly-mellowing  change 
May  breathe,  with  many  roses  sweet, 
Upon  the  thousand  waves  of  wheat. 
That  ripple  round  the  lonely  grange : 

*'  Come  :  not  in  watches  of  the  night, 

But  where  the  sunbeam  broodeth  warm, 
Come,  beauteous  in  thine  after-form. 
And  like  a  finer  light  in  light." 

Or  still  more  touchingly,  in  No.  49,  for  here  he  writes 
from  the  depths  of  a  sick  despondency,  from  all  the  dark- 
ness of  a  bad  quarter  of  an  hour. 

"  Be  near  me  when  my  light  is  low, 

When  the  blood  creeps,  and  the  nerves  prick 
And  tingle ;  and  the  heart  is  sick, 
And  all  the  wheels  of  Being  slow. 

"  Be  near  me  when  the  sensuous  frame 

Is  racked  with  pains  that  conquer  trust; 
And  Time,  a  maniac  scattering  dust, 
And  Life,  a  fury,  slinging  flame. 

"  Be  near  me  when  my  faith  is  dry, 

And  men  the  flies  of  latter  spring. 
That  lay  their  eggs,  and  sting  and  sing. 
And  weave  their  petty  cells  and  die. 

**  Be  near  me  when  I  fade  away, 

To  point  the  term  of  human  strife. 
And  on  the  low  dark  verge  of  life 
The  twilight  of  eternal  day." 


42  The  English  Novel 

Has  it  diminished  his  tender  care  for  the  weakness  of 
others  ?    We  are  wonderfully  answered  in  No.  33. 

**  O  thou  that  after  toil  and  storm 

Mayst  seem  to  have  reach'd  a  purer  air, 
Whose  faith  has  centre  everywhere, 
Nor  cares  to  fix  itself  to  form, 

"  Leave  thou  thy  sister  when  she  prays, 

Her  early  Heaven,  her  happy  views ; 
Nor  thou  with  shadow'd  hint  confuse 
A  life  that  leads  melodious  days. 

**  Her  faith  thro'  form  is  pure  as  thine. 

Her  hands  are  quicker  unto  good. 
Oh,  sacred  be  the  flesh  and  blood 
To  which  she  links  a  truth  divine ! 

"  See  thou,  that  countest  reason  ripe 
In  holding  by  the  law  within. 
Thou  fail  not  in  a  world  of  sin, 
And  ev'n  for  want  of  such  a  type." 

Has  it  crushed  out  his  pure  sense  of  poetic  beauty  ? 
Here  in  No.  86  we  have  a  poem  which,  for  what  I  can 
only  call  absolute  beauty,  is  simply  perfect. 

"  Sweet  after  showers,  ambrosial  air, 

That  rollest  from  the  gorgeous  gloom 
Of  evening  over  brake  and  bloom 
And  meadow,  slowly  breathing  bare 

**  The  round  of  space,  and  rapt  below 
Thro'  all  the  dewy-tassell'd  wood, 
And  shadowing  down  the  horned  flood 
In  ripples,  fan  my  brows  and  blow 

"The  fever  from  my  cheek,  and  sigh 

The  full  new  life  that  feeds  thy  breath 
Throughout  my  frame,  till  Doubt  and  Death, 
111  brethren,  let  the  fancy  fly 


The  Development  of  Personality       43 

•*  From  belt  to  belt  of  crimson  seas 

On  leagues  of  odour  streaming  far 
To  where  in  yonder  orient  star 
A  hundred  spirits  whisper  '  Peace.* " 

And  finally  we  are  able  to  see  from  his  own  words 
that  he  is  not  ignorantly  resisting  the  influences  of  science, 
but  that  he  knows  science,  reveres  it  and  understands  its 
precise  place  and  function.  What  he  terms  in  the  follow- 
ing poem  (i  13  of /«  Memoriam)  Knowledge  and  Wisdom 
are  what  we  have  been  speaking  of  as  Science  and 
Poetry. 

"  Who  loves  not  Knowledge  ?    Who  shall  rail 
Against  her  beauty  ?    May  she  mix 
With  men  and  prosper  !     Who  shall  fix 
Her  pillars  ?    Let  her  work  prevail. 


Let  her  know  her  place; 
She  is  the  second,  not  the  first. 

**  A  higher  hand  must  make  her  mild, 
If  all  be  not  in  vain ;  and  guide 
Her  footsteps,  moving  side  by  side 
With  wisdom,  like  the  younger  child : 

**  For  she  is  earthly  of  the  mind. 

But  Wisdom  heavenly  of  the  soul. 
O  friend,  who  camest  to  thy  goal 
So  early,  leaving  me  behind, 

"  I  would  the  great  world  grew  like  thee 
Who  grewest  not  alone  in  power 
And  knowledge,  but  by  year  and  hour 
In  reverence  and  in  charity." 

If  then,  regarding  Tennyson  as  fairly  a  representative 
victim  of  science,  we  find  him  still  preaching  the  poet's 
gospel  of  beauty,  as  comprehending  the  evangel  of  faith, 


44  The  English  Novel 

hope  and  charity,  only  preaching  it  in  those  newer  and 
finer  forms  with  which  science  itself  has  endowed  him ; 
if  we  find  his  poetry  just  so  much  stronger  and  richer 
and  riper  by  as  much  as  he  has  been  trained  and  beaten 
and  disciplined  with  the  stem  questions  which  scientific 
speculation  has  put  —  questions  which  you  will  find  pre- 
sented in  their  most  sombre  terribleness  in  Tennyson's 
Two  Voices ;  if  finally  we  find  him  steadily  regarding 
science  as  knowledge  which  only  the  true  poet  can  vivify 
into  wisdom :  —  then  I  say,  life  is  too  short  to  waste  any 
of  it  in  listening  to  those  who,  in  the  face  of  this  history, 
still  prophesy  that  Science  is  to  destroy  Poetry. 

Nothing,  indeed,  would  be  easier  than  to  answer  all 
this  argument  upon  a  priori  grounds.  The  argument  is, 
in  brief,  that  wonder  and  mystery  are  the  imagination's 
materiel,  and  that  science  is  to  explain  away  all  mystery. 
But  what  a  crude  view  is  this  of  explanation  !  The  mo- 
ment you  examine  the  process,  you  find  that  at  bottom 
explanation  is  simply  the  reduction  of  unfamiliar  mys- 
teries to  terms  of  familiar  mysteries.  For  simplest  ex- 
ample :  here  is  a  mass  of  conglomerate ;  science  explains 
that  it  is  composed  of  a  great  number  of  pebbles  which 
have  become  fastened  together  by  a  natural  cement.  But 
after  all,  is  not  one  pebble  as  great  a  mystery  as  a  moun- 
tain of  conglomerate?  though  we  are  familiar  with  the 
pebble,  and  unfamiliar  with  the  other.  Now  to  the  wise 
man,  the  poet,  familiarity  with  a  mystery  brings  no  con- 
\  tempt :  to  him  every  explanation  of  science,  supremely 
'fascinating  as  it  is,  but  opens  up  a  new  world  of  wonders, 
but  adds  to  old  mysteries.  Indeed,  the  wise  searcher 
into  nature  always  finds,  as  a  poet  has  declared,  that 

..."  In  seeking  to  undo 
One  riddle,  and  to  find  the  true 
I  knit  a  hundred  others  new." 


The  Development  of  Personality       45 

And  so,  away  with  this  folly :  science,  instead  of  being 
the  enemy  of  poetry,  is  its  quartermaster  and  commissary 
—  it  forever  purveys  for  poetry ;  and  just  so  much  more 
as  it  shall  bring  man  into  contact  with  nature,  just  so 
much  more  large  and  intense  and  rich  will  be  the  poetry 
of  the  future  in  its  contents,  just  so  much  finer  and  more 
abundant  in  its  forms. 

And  here  we  may  advance  to  our  second  class  who 
believe  that  the  poetry  of  the  future  is  to  be  democratic 
and  formless. 

Here  let  me  first  carefully  disclaim  and  condemn  all 
that  flippant  and  sneering  tone  which  dominates  so  many 
discussions  of  Whitman.  While  I  differ  from  him  utterly 
as  to  every  principle  of  artistic  procedure ;  while  he 
seems  to  me  the  most  stupendously  mistaken  man  in 
all  history  as  to  what  constitutes  true  democracy,  and 
the  true  advance  of  art  and  man ;  while  I  am  immeasur- 
ably shocked  at  the  sweeping  invasions  of  those  reserves 
which  depend  on  the  very  personality  I  have  so  much 
insisted  upon,  and  which  the  whole  consensus  of  the 
ages  has  considered  more  and  more  sacred  with  every 
year  of  growth  in  delicacy ;  yet,  after  all  these  prodigious 
allowances,  I  owe  some  keen  delights  to  a  certain  com- 
bination of  bigness  and  naivety  which  make  some  of 
Whitman's  passages  so  strong  and  taking,  and  indeed, 
on  the  one  occasion  when  Whitman  has  abandoned  his 
theory  of  formlessness  and  written  in  form  he  has  made 
My  Captain^  O  my  Captain  surely  one  of  the  most 
tender  and  beautiful  poems  in  any  language. 

I  need  quote  but  a  few  scraps  from  characteristic  sen- 
tences here  and  there  in  a  recent  paper  of  Whitman's  in 
order  to  present  a  perfectly  fair  view  of  his  whole  doc- 
trine. When,  for  instance,  he  declares  that  Tennyson's 
poetry  is  not  the  poetry  of  the  future  because,  although 


46  The  English  Novel 

it  is  "the  highest  order  of  verbal  melody,  exquisitely 
clean  and  pure  and  almost  always  perfumed  like  the  tube- 
rose to  an  extreme  of  sweetness,"  yet  it  has  *' never  one 
democratic  page,"  and  is  "  never  free,  naive  poetry,  but 
involved,  labored,  quite  sophisticated ; "  when  we  find 
him  bragging  of  "the  measureless  viciousness  of  the 
great  radical  republic  "  (the  United  States,  of  course) 
"  with  its  ruffianly  nominations  and  elections ;  its  loud, 
ill-pitched  voice,  utterly  regardless  whether  the  verb 
agrees  with  the  nominative ;  its  fights,  errors,  eructations, 
repulsions,  dishonesties,  audacities;  those  fearful  and 
varied,  long  and  continued  storm-and-stress  stages  (so 
offensive  to  the  well-regulated,  college-bred  mind)  where- 
with nature,  history  and  time  block  out  nationalities  more 
powerful  than  the  past ;  "  and  when  finally  we  hear  him 
tenderly  declaring  that  "  meanwhile  democracy  waits  the 
coming  of  its  bards  in  silence  and  in  twilight  —  but  'tis 
the  twilight  of  dawn  "  :  — we  are  in  sufficient  possession 
of  the  distinctive  catch-words  which  summarize  his 
doctrine. 

In  examining  it,  a  circumstance  occurs  to  me  at  the 
outset  which  throws  a  strange  but  effective  light  upon 
the  whole  argument.  It  seems  curious  to  reflect  that  the 
two  poets  who  have  most  avowedly  written  for  the  people, 
who  have  claimed  most  distinctively  to  represent  and 
embody  the  thought  of  the  people,  and  to  be  bone  of  the 
people's  bone  and  flesh  of  the  people's  flesh,  are  pre- 
cisely the  two  who  have  most  signally  failed  of  all  popu- 
lar acceptance  and  who  have  most  exclusively  found 
audience  at  the  other  extreme  of  culture.  These  are 
Wordsworth  and  Whitman.  We  all  know  how  strenu- 
ously and  faithfully  Wordsworth  believed  that  in  using 
the  simplest  words  and  treating  the  lowliest  themes,  he 
was  bringing  poetry  back  near  to  the  popular  heart ;  yet 


The  Development  of  Personality       47 

Wordsworth's  greatest  admirer  is  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold, 
the  apostle  of  culture,  the  farthest  remove  from  anything 
that  could  be  called  popular  :  and  in  point  of  fact  it  is  pro- 
bable that  many  a  peasant  who  would  feel  his  blood  stir  in 
heanng  A  man^s  a  manfora^  that^  would  grin  and  guffaw 
if  you  should  read  him  Wordsworth's  Lambs  and  Peter 
Grays, 

And  a  precisely  similar  fate  has  met  Whitman.  Pro- 
fessing to  be  a  mudsill  and  glorying  in  it,  chanting  de- 
mocracy and  shirt-sleeves  and  equal  rights,  declaring 
that  he  is  nothing  if  not  one  of  the  people,  nevertheless 
the  people,  the  democracy,  will  yet  have  nothmg  to  do 
with  him,  and  it  is  safe  to  say  that  his  sole  audience  has 
lain  among  such  representatives  of  the  highest  culture  as 
Emerson  and  the  English  illuminated. 

The  truth  is,  that  if  closely  examined,  Whitman,  in- 
stead of  being  a  true  democrat,  is  simply  the  most  incor- 
rigible of  aristocrats  masquing  in  a  peasant's  costume, 
and  his  poetry,  instead  of  being  the  natural  outcome  of 
a  fresh  young  democracy,  is  a  product  which  would  be 
impossible  except  in  a  highly  civilized  society. 


48  The  English  Novel 


III 


At  our  last  meeting  we  endeavored  to  secure  some 
solid  basis  for  our  ideas  of  form  in  general,  and  to  develop 
thereupon  some  conceptions  of  form  in  art,  and  specially 
of  literary  form,  which  would  enable  us  to  see  our  way 
clear  among  misconceptions  of  this  subject  which  prevail. 
We  there  addressed  ourselves  towards  considering 
particularly  three  of  these  misconceptions.  The  first 
we  examined  was  that  which  predicts  the  total  death  of 
imaginative  literature — poetry,  novels  and  all —  in  conse- 
quence of  a  certain  supposed  quality  of  imagination  by 
virtue  of  which,  like  some  ruin-haunting  animals,  it  can- 
not live  in  the  light,  so  that  the  destructive  explanations 
of  advancing  science  —  it  was  apprehended  —  would 
gradually  force  all  our  imaginative  energies  back  into 
the  dark  crevices  of  old  fable  and  ruined  romance  until 
finally,  penetrating  these  also,  it  would  exterminate  the 
species.  We  first  tested  this  idea  by  laying  it  alongside 
the  historic  facts  in  the  case  :  confining  our  view  to 
England,  we  found  that  science  and  poetry  had  been 
developing  alongside  of  each  other  ever  since  early  in 
the  seventeenth  century;  inquiring  into  the  general 
effect  of  this  long  contact,  we  could  only  find  that  it  was 
to  make  our  general  poetry  greatly  richer  in  substance 
and  finer  in  form ;  and  upon  testing  this  abstract  conclu- 
sion by  a  concrete  examination  of  Tennyson  —  as  a  poet 
most  likely  to  show  the  influence  of  science  because 
himself  most  exposed  to  it,  indeed  most  saturated  with 


The  Development  of  Personality        49 

it  —  we  found  from  several  readings  in  In  Memoriam  that 
whether  as  to  love,  or  friendship,  or  the  sacredness  of 
marriage,  or  the  pure  sense  of  beauty,  or  the  true  relation 
of  knowledge  to  wisdom,  or  faith  in  God,  —  the  effect  of 
science  had  been  on  the  whole  to  broaden  the  concep- 
tions and  to  clarify  the  forms  in  which  they  were  ex- 
pressed by  this  great  poet. 

And  having  thus  appealed  to  facts,  we  found  further 
that  in  the  nature  of  things  no  such  destruction  could 
follow :  that  what  we  call  explanation  in  science  is  at 
bottom  only  a  reduction  of  unfamiliar  mysteries  to  terms 
of  familiar  mysteries,  and  that,  since  to  the  true  imagina- 
tive mind,  whether  of  poet  or  novelist,  the  mysteries  of 
this  world  grow  all  the  greater  as  they  grow  more 
familiar,  the  necessary  effect  of  scientific  explanations  is 
at  last  the  indefinite  increase  of  food  for  the  imagination. 
The  modern  imagination,  indeed,  shall  still  love  mystery ; 
but  it  is  not  the  shallow  mystery  of  those  small  darks 
which  are  enclosed  by  caves  and  crumbling  dungeons,  it 
is  the  unfathomable  mystery  of  the  sunlight  and  the  sun, 
it  is  this  inexplicable  contradictory  shadow  of  the  infinite 
which  is  projected  upon  the  finite,  it  is  this  multitudinous 
flickering  of  all  the  other  egos  upon  the  tissue  of  my 
ego :  these  are  the  lights  and  shades  and  vaguenesses  of 
mystery  in  which  the  modern  imaginative  effort  delights. 
And  here  I  cannot  help  adding  to  what  was  said  on  this 
subject  in  the  last  lecture,  by  declaring  to  every  young 
man  who  may  entertain  the  hope  of  poethood,  that  at 
this  stage  of  the  world  you  need  not  dream  of  winning 
the  attention  of  sober  people  with  your  poetry  unless 
that  poetry,  and  your  soul  behind  it,  are  informed  and 
saturated  at  least  with  the  largest  final  conceptions  of 
current  science.  I  do  not  mean  that  you  are  to  write 
Loves  of  the  Plants,  I   do  not    mean  that  you  are   to 

4 


5©  The  English  Novel 

versify  Biology,  but  I  mean  that  you  must  be  so  far 
instinct  with  the  scientific  thought  of  the  time  that  your 
poetic  conceptions  will  rush  as  it  were  from  under  these 
pure  cold  facts  of  science  like  those  Alpine  torrents 
which  flow  out  of  glaciers.  Or,  —  to  change  the  figure 
for  the  better  —  just  as  the  chemist,  in  causing  chlorine 
and  hydrogen  to  form  hydrochloric  acid,  finds  that  he 
must  not  only  put  the  chlorine  and  hydrogen  together, 
but  must  put  them  together  in  the  presence  of  light 
in  order  to  make  them  combine :  so  the  poet  of  our 
time  will  find  that  his  best  poetic  combinations,  his 
greatest  syntheses  of  wisdom,  own  this  law,  and  they  too 
must  be  effected  in  the  presence  of  the  awful  light  of 
science. 

Returning  to  our  outline  of  the  last  lecture  :  After  we 
had  discussed  this  matter,  we  advanced  to  the  second  of 
the  great  misconceptions  of  the  function  of  form  in  art  — 
that  which  holds  that  the  imaginative  effort  of  the  future 
will  be  better  than  that  of  the  present,  and  that  this  im- 
provement will  come  through  a  progress  towards  form- 
lessness. After  quoting  several  sentences  from  Whitman 
which  seemed  to  contain  the  substantial  argument  — 
to- wit,  that  the  poetry  of  the  future  is  to  be  signalized  by 
independence  of  form,  and  is,  by  virtue  of  this  indepen- 
dence, to  gain  strength,  and  become  a  democratic  poetry, 
as  contrasted  with  the  supposed  weak  and  aristocratic 
poetry  of  the  present  —  I  called  your  attention  to  a  notable 
circumstance  which  seems  to  throw  a  curious  light  along 
this  inquiry :  that  circumstance  being  that  the  two  Eng- 
lish poets  who  have  most  exclusively  laid  claim  to  re- 
present the  people  in  poetry,  to  express  nothing  but  the 
people's  heart  in  the  people's  words,  namely,  Words- 
worth and  Whitman,  are  precisely  the  two  whose  audi- 
ence has  been  most  exclusively  confined  to  the  other 


The  Development  of  Personality       51 

extreme  of  culture.  Wordsworth,  instead  of  appealing 
to  Hodge,  Nokes,  and  Stiles,  instead  of  being  found  in 
penny  editions  on  the  collier's  shelves,  is  most  cherished 
by  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  the  high-priest  of  culture.  And 
so  with  Whitman.  We  may  say  with  safety  that  no 
preacher  was  ever  so  decisively  rejected  by  his  own : 
continually  crying  democracy  in  the  market-place,  and 
crying  it  in  forms  or  no- forms  professing  to  be  nothing 
but  products  of  the  democratic  spirit,  nevertheless  the 
democracy  everywhere  have  turned  a  deaf  ear,  and 
it  is  only  with  a  few  of  the  most  sober  and  retired 
thinkers  of  our  time  that  Whitman  has  found  even  a 
partial  acceptance. 

And  finally  by  way  of  showing  a  reason  for  this  state 
of  things  in  Whitman's  case,  the  last  lecture  closed  with 
the  assertion  that  Whitman's  poetry,  in  spite  of  his 
belief  (which  I  feel  sure  is  most  earnest)  that  it  is 
democratic,  is  really  aristocratic  to  the  last  degree ;  and 
instead  of  belonging,  as  he  claims,  to  an  early  and 
fresh-thoughted  stage  of  a  republic,  is  really  poetry 
which  would  be  impossible  except  in  a  highly  civilized 
state  of  society. 

Here,  then,  let  us  take  up  the  thread  of  that  argument. 
In  the  quotations  which  were  given  from  Whitman's 
paper,  we  have  really  the  ideal  democracy  and  democrat 
of  this  school.  It  is  curious  to  reflect  in  the  first  place 
that  in  point  of  fact  no  such  democracy,  no  such  demo- 
crat, has  ever  existed  in  this  country.  For  example : 
when  Whitman  tells  us  of  "  the  measureless  viciousness 
of  the  great  radical  republic,  with  its  ruffianly  nomina- 
tions and  elections ;  its  loud  ill-pitched  voice ;  its  fights, 
errors,  eructations,  dishonesties,  audacities,  those  fearful 
and  varied  storm-and-stress  stages  (so  offensive  to  the 
well-regulated,   college-bred    mind)    wherewith   nature, 


52  The  English  Novel 

history  and  time  block  out  nationalities  more  powerful 
than  the  past ;  "  when  he  tells  us  this,  with  a  sort  of 
caressing  touch  upon  all  the  bad  adjectives,  rolling  the 
"  errors  "  and  the  "  audacities  "  and  the  "  viciousness  " 
under  his  tongue  and  faithfully  believing  that  the  strength 
which  recommends  his  future  poetry  is  to  come  out  of 
viciousness  and  ruffianly  elections  and  the  like :  let  us 
inquire,  to  what  representative  facts  in  our  history  does 
this  picture  correspond,  what  great  democrat  who  has 
helped  to  block  out  this  present  republic  sat  for  this 
portrait  ?  Is  it  George  Washington,  that  beautiful,  broad, 
tranquil  spirit  whom,  I  sometimes  think,  even  we  Ameri- 
cans have  never  yet  held  quite  at  his  true  value,  —  is  it 
Washington  who  was  vicious,  dishonest,  audacious,  com- 
bative? But  Washington  had  some  hand  in  blocking 
out  this  republic.  Or  what  would  our  courtly  and  philo- 
sophic Thomas  Jefferson  look  like  if  you  should  put  this 
slouch  hat  on  him,  and  open  his  shirt-front  at  the  bosom, 
and  set  him  to  presiding  over  a  ruffianly  nomination? 
Yet  he  had  some  hand  in  blocking  out  this  republic.  In 
one  of  Whitman's  poems  I  find  him  crying  out  to  Ameri- 
cans, in  this  same  strain :  "  O  lands  !  would  you  be  freer 
than  all  that  has  ever  been  before?  If  you  would  be 
freer  than  all  that  has  been  before,  come  listen  to  me." 
And  this  is  the  deliverance  : 

"  Fear  grace  —fear  elegance,  civilization,  delicatesse, 
Fear  the  mellow  sweet,  the  sucking  of  honey-juice; 
Beware  the  advancing  mortal  ripening  of  nature, 
Beware  what  precedes  the  decay  of  the  ruggedness  of  States 
and  men." 

And  in  another  line,  he  rejoices  in  America  because  — 
"  Here  are  the  roughs,  beards,  .  .  .  combativeness," 
and  the  like. 


The  Development  of  Personality        ^^ 

But  where  are  these  roughs,  these  beards,  and  this 
combativeness  ?  Were  the  Adamses  and  Benjamin 
FrankUn  roughs?  was  it  these  who  taught  us  to  make 
ruffianly  nominations?  But  they  had  some  hand  in 
blocking  out  this  republic.  In  short,  leaving  each  one 
to  extend  this  list  of  names  for  himself,  it  may  be  fairly 
said  that  nowhere  in  history  can  one  find  less  of  that 
ruggedness  which  Whitman  regards  as  the  essential  of 
democracy,  nowhere  more  of  that  grace  which  he  con- 
siders fatal  to  it,  than  among  the  very  representative 
democrats  who  blocked  out  this  republic.  In  truth, 
when  Whitman  cries  "fear  the  mellow  sweet,"  and 
"beware  the  mortal  ripening  of  nature,"  we  have  an 
instructive  instance  of  the  extreme  folly  into  which  a 
man  may  be  led  by  mistaking  a  metaphor  for  an  argu- 
ment. The  argument  here  is,  you  observe,  that  because 
an  apple  in  the  course  of  nature  rots  soon  after  it 
mellows,  arga/  a  man  cannot  mellow  his  spirit  with 
culture  without  decaying  soon  afterwards.  Of  course 
it  is  sufficient  only  to  reflect  non  sequitur:  for  it  is 
precisely  the  difference  between  the  man  and  the  apple 
that  whereas  every  apple  must  rot  after  ripeness  no  man 
is  bound  to. 

If  therefore  after  an  inquiry  ranging  from  Washington 
and  Jefferson  down  to  William  Cnllen  Bryant  (that 
surely  unrugged  and  graceful  figure  who  was  so  often 
called  the  finest  American  gentleman)  and  Lowell  and 
Longfellow  and  the  rest  who  are  really  the  men  that  are 
blocking  out  our  republic,  —  if  we  find  not  a  single 
representative  American  democrat  to  whom  any  of  these 
pet  adjectives  apply,  —  not  one  who  is  measurelessly 
vicious,  or  ruffianly,  or  audacious,  or  purposely  rugged, 
or  contemptuous  towards  the  graces  of  life,  —  then  we 
are   obliged  to   affirm   that   the  whole  ideal  drawn  by 


54  The  English  Novel 

Whitman  is  a  fancy  picture  with  no  counterpart  in 
nature.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  we  have  ruffianly  nomi- 
nations ;  but  we  have  them  because  the  real  democrats 
who  govern  our  republic,  who  represent  our  democracy, 
stay  away  from  nominating  conventions  and  leave  them 
to  the  ruffians.  Surely  no  one  can  look  with  the  most 
cursory  eye  upon  our  everyday  American  life  without 
seeing  that  the  real  advance  of  our  society  goes  on 
not  only  without,  but  largely  in  spite  of  that  ostensible 
apparatus,  legislative,  executive,  judicial  which  we  call 
the  Government,  —  that  really  the  most  effective  legisla- 
tion in  our  country  is  that  which  is  enacted  in  the 
breasts  of  the  individual  democrats  who  compose  it. 
And  this  is  true  democratic  growth :  every  day,  more 
and  more,  each  man  perceives  that  the  shortest  and 
most  effectual  method  of  securing  his  own  rights  is 
to  respect  the  rights  of  others,  and  so  every  day  do 
we  less  and  less  need  outside  interference  in  our  indi- 
vidual relations ;  so  that  every  day  we  approach  nearer 
and  nearer  towards  that  ideal  government  in  which  each 
man  is  mainly  his  own  legislator,  his  own  governor 
or  president,  and  his  own  judge,  and  in  which  the 
public  government  is  mainly  a  concert  of  measures  for 
the  common  sanitation  and  police. 

But  again :  it  is  true  as  Whitman  says  that  we  have 
dishonesties;  but  we  punish  them,  they  are  not  repre- 
sentative, they  have  no  more  relation  to  democracy  than 
the  English  thief  has  to  English  aristocracy. 

From  what  spirit  of  blindness  is  it  alleged  that  these 
things  are  peculiar  to  our  democracy?  Whitman  here 
explicitly  declares  that  the  over-dainty  Englishman  "  can- 
not stomach  the  high-life  below  stairs  of  our  social 
status  so  far,"  this  high-life  consisting  of  the  measureless 
viciousness,    the    dishonesty,  and    the    like.      Cannot 


The  Development  of  Personality       55 

stomach  it,  no :  who  could  ?  But  how  absurd  to  come 
down  to  this  repubHc,  to  American  society  for  these 
things !  Alas,  I  know  an  Englishman,  who,  three 
hundred  years  ago,  found  these  same  things  in  that 
aristocracy  there :  and  he  too,  thank  heaven,  could  not 
stomach  them,  for  he  has  condemned  them  in  a  sonnet 
which  is  the  solace  of  all  sober-thoughted  ages.  I  mean 
Shakspere,  and  his  sonnet : 

LXVI. 

"Tired  with  all  these,  for  restful  death  I  cry,— 
As,  to  behold  desert  a  beggar  born, 
And  needy  nothing  trimmed  in  jollity, 
And  purest  faith  unhappily  foresworn. 
And  gilded  honor  shamefully  misplaced. 
And  maiden  virtue  rudely  strumpeted, 
And  right  perfection  wrongfully  disgraced, 
And  strength  by  limping  sway  disabled. 
And  art  made  tongue-tied  by  authority. 
And  folly  (doctor-like)  controlling  skill, 
And  simple  truth  miscalled  simplicity. 
And  captive  good  attending  captain  ill : 
Tired  of  all  these,  from  these  would  I  be  gone, 
Save  that,  to  die,  I  leave  my  love  alone." 

It  is  true  that  we  have  bad  manners ;  yet  among  the 
crowds  at  the  Centennial  Exposition  it  was  universally 
remarked  that  in  no  country  in  the  world  could  such 
vast  multitudes  of  people  have  assembled  day  after  day 
with  so  few  arrests  by  the  police,  with  so  little  disorder, 
and  with  such  an  apparent  universal  and  effective  senti- 
ment of  respect  for  decorum  and  law. 

Now  if  we  carry  the  result  of  this  inquiry  over  into 
art ;  if  we  are  presented  with  a  poetry  which  professes  to 
be  democratic  because  it  —  the  poetry  —  is  measurelessly 
vicious,  purposely  eructant,  striving  after  ruggedness, 
despising  grace,  like  the  democracy  described  by  Whit- 


S6  The  English  Novel 

man ;  then  we  reply  that  as  matter  of  fact  there  never 
was  any  such  American  democracy  and  that  the  poetry 
which  represents  it  has  no  constituency.  And  herein 
seems  a  most  abundant  solution  of  the  fact  just  now 
brought  to  your  notice,  that  the  actually  existing  democ- 
racy have  never  accepted  Whitman's  poetry.  But  here 
we  are  met  with  the  cry  of  strength  and  manfulness. 
Everywhere  throughout  Whitman's  poetry  the  "rude 
muscle,"  the  brawn,  the  physical  bigness  of  the  Ameri- 
can prairie,  the  sinew  of  the  Western  backwoodsman,  are 
apotheosized,  and  all  these,  as  Whitman  claims,  are  fitly 
chanted  in  his  "  savage  song." 

Here,  then,  is  a  great  stalwart  man,  in  perfect  health, 
all  brawn  and  rude  muscle,  set  up  before  us  as  the  ideal 
of  strength.  Let  us  examine  this  strength  a  little. 
For  one,  I  declare  that  I  do  not  find  it  impressive. 
Yonder,  in  a  counting-room  —  alas,  in  how  many 
counting-rooms  !  —  a  young  man  with  weak  eyes  bends 
over  a  ledger,  and  painfully  casts  up  the  figures  day  by 
day,  on  pitiful  wages,  to  support  his  mother,  or  to  send 
his  younger  brother  to  school,  or  some  such  matter.  If 
we  watch  this  young  man  when  he  takes  down  his  hat, 
lays  off"  his  ink-splotched  office-coat,  and  starts  home  for 
dinner,  we  perceive  that  he  is  in  every  respect  the  opposite 
of  the  stalwart  Whitman  ideal ;  his  chest  is  not  huge,  his 
legs  are  inclined  to  be  pipe-stems,  and  his  dress  is  like 
that  of  any  other  book-keeper.  Yet  the  weak-eyed  pipe- 
stem-legged  young  man  impresses  me  as  more  of  a  man, 
more  of  a  democratic  man,  than  the  tallest  of  Whitman's 
roughs ;  to  the  eye  of  my  spirit  there  is  more  strength  in 
this  man's  daily  endurance  of  petty  care  and  small  weari- 
ness, for  love,  more  of  the  sort  of  stuff  which  makes  a 
real  democracy  and  a  sound  republic,  than  in  an  army  of 
Whitman's  unshaven  loafers. 


The  Development  of  Personality       57 

I  know  —  and  count  it  among  the  privileges  of  my  life 
that  I  do  —  a  woman  who  has  spent  her  whole  life  in  bed 
for  twenty  years  past,  confined  by  a  curious  form  of 
spinal  disease  which  prevents  locomotion  and  which  in 
spite  of  constant  pain  and  disturbance  leaves  the  system 
long  unworn.  Day  by  day  she  lies  helpless,  at  the 
mercy  of  all  those  tyrannical  small  needs  which  become 
so  large  under  such  circumstances ;  every  meal  must  be 
brought  to  her,  a  drink  of  water  must  be  handed ;  and 
she  is  not  rich,  to  command  service.  Withal  her  nature 
is  of  the  brightest  and  most  energetic  sort.  Yet,  sur- 
rounded by  these  unspeakable  pettinesses,  enclosed  in 
this  cage  of  contradictions,  this  woman  has  made  herself 
the  centre  of  an  adoring  circle  of  the  brightest  people  ; 
her  room  is  called  "  Sunnyside  :  "  when  brawny  men  are 
tired  they  go  to  her  for  rest,  when  people  in  the  rudest 
physical  health  are  sick  of  life  they  go  to  her  for  the  cura- 
tive virtue  of  her  smiles.  Now  this  woman  has  not  so 
much  rude  muscle  in  her  whole  body  as  Whitman's  man 
has  in  his  little  finger :  she  is  so  fragile  that  long  ago 
some  one  called  her  "  White  Flower,"  and  by  this  name 
she  is  much  known  :  it  costs  her  as  much  labor  to  press  a 
friend's  hand  as  it  costs  Whitman's  rough  to  fell  a  tree  : 
regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of  brawn  and  sinew,  she 
is  simply  absurd ;  yet  to  the  eye  of  my  spirit  there  is  more 
manfulness  in  one  moment  of  her  loving  and  self-sacri- 
ficing existence  than  in  an  aeon  of  muscle-growth  and 
sinew-breeding :  and  hers  is  the  manfulness  which  is  the 
only  solution  of  a  true  democrat,  hers  is  the  manfulness 
of  which  only  can  a  republic  be  built.  A  republic  is  the 
government  of  the  spirit ;  a  republic  depends  upon  the 
self-control  of  each  member ;  you  cannot  make  a  republic 
out  of  muscles  and  prairies  and  Rocky  mountains :  re- 
publics are  made  of  the  spirit. 


58  The  English  Novel 

Nay,  when  we  think  of  it,  how  little  is  it  a  matter  of 
the  future,  how  entirely  is  it  a  matter  of  the  past,  when 
people  come  running  at  us  with  rude  muscle  and  great 
mountains  and  such  matters  of  purely  physical  bigness  to 
shake  our  souls  ?  How  long  ago  is  it  that  they  began  to 
put  great  bearskin  caps  on  soldiers  with  a  view  to  make 
them  look  grisly  and  formidable  when  advancing  on  the 
enemy?  It  is  so  long  ago  that  the  practice  has  survived 
mainly  as  ceremonial,  and  the  little  boys  on  the  streets 
now  laugh  at  this  ferociousness  when  the  sappers  and 
miners  come  by  who  affect  this  costume. 

Yet  here  in  the  nineteenth  century  we  behold  artists 
purposely  setting  bearskin  caps  upon  their  poetry  to 
make  it  effective.  This  sort  of  thing  never  yet  succeeded 
as  against  Anglo-Saxon  people.  I  cannot  help  thinking 
here  of  old  Lord  Berners'  account  translated  from 
Froissart,  of  how  the  Genoese  cross-bowmen  attempted 
to  frighten  the  English  warriors  at  the  battle  of  Cr^cy. 
"Whan  the  genowayes  were  assembled  togayder,  and 
beganne  to  aproche,  they  made  a  great  leape  and  crye, 
to  abasshe  thenglysshmen,  but  they  stode  styll,  and 
styredde  not  for  all  that ;  thane  the  genowayes  agayne 
the  seconde  tyme  made  another  leape,  and  a  fell  crye, 
and  stepped  forward  a  lytell,  and  thenglysshmen  remeved 
not  one  fote ;  thirdly,  agayne  they  leapt  and  cryed,  and 
went  forthe  tyll  they  come  within  shotte;  thane  they 
shot  feersley  with  their  crosbowes;  than  thenglysshe 
archers  stept  forthe  one  pase,  and  lette  fly  their  arowes 
so  hotly,  and  so  thycke,  that  it  semed  snowe ;  when 
the  genowayes  felt  the  arowes  persynge  through  heedes, 
armes,  and  brestes,  many  of  them  cast  downe  their  cros- 
bowes, and  dyde  cutte  their  strynges,  and  retoumed 
dysconfited." 

And  so  the  Poetry  of  the  Future  has  advanced  upon  us 


The  Development  of  Personality       59 

with  a  great  leap  and  a  fell  cry,  relying  upon  its  loud, 
ill-pitched  voice,  but  the  democracy  have  stirred  not  for 
all  that.  Perhaps  we  may  fairly  say,  gentlemen,  it  is  five 
hundred  years  too  late  to  attempt  to  capture  English- 
men with  a  yell. 

I  think  it  interesting  to  compare  Whitman's  often 
expressed  contempt  for  poetic  beauty  —  he  taunts  the 
young  magazine  writers  of  the  present  time  with  having 
the  beauty-disease  —  with  some  utterances  of  one  who 
praised  the  true  function  of  ruggedness  in  works  the 
world  will  not  soon  forget.  I  mean  Thomas  Carlyle, 
who  has  so  recently  passed  into  the  Place  where  the 
strong  and  the  virtuous  and  the  beautiful  souls  assemble 
themselves.  In  one  of  Carlyle's  essays  he  speaks  as 
follows  of  Poetic  Beauty.  These  words  scarcely  sound 
as  if  they  came  from  the  lover  of  Danton  and  Mirabeau. 

"  It  dwells  and  is  bom  in  the  inmost  Spirit  of  Man, 
united  to  all  love  of  Virtue,  to  all  true  belief  in  God ;  or 
rather,  it  is  one  with  this  love  and  this  beUef,  another 
phase  of  the  same  highest  principle  in  the  mysterious 
infinitude  of  the  human  Soul.  To  apprehend  this  beauty 
of  poetry,  in  its  full  and  purest  brightness,  is  not  easy, 
but  difficult ;  thousands  on  thousands  eagerly  read  poems, 
and  attain  not  the  smallest  taste  of  it ;  yet  to  all  uncor- 
rupted  hearts,  some  effulgences  of  this  heavenly  glory 
are  here  and  there  revealed ;  and  to  apprehend  it  clearly 
and  wholly,  to  acquire  and  maintain  a  sense  of  heart  that 
sees  and  worships  it,  is  the  last  perfection  of  all  humane 
culture." 

In  the  name  of  all  really  manful  democracy,  in  the 
name  of  the  true  strength  that  only  can  make  our  repub- 
lic reputable  among  the  nations,  let  us  repudiate  the 
strength  that  is  no  stronger  than  a  human  biceps,  let  us 
repudiate  the  manfulness  that  averages  no  more  than  six 


6o  The  English  Novel 

feet  high.  My  democrat,  the  democrat  whom  I  contem- 
plate with  pleasure,  the  democrat  who  is  to  write  or  to 
read  the  poetry  of  the  future,  may  have  a  mere  thread  for 
his  biceps,  yet  he  shall  be  strong  enough  to  handle  hell, 
he  shall  play  ball  with  the  earth ;  and  albeit  his  stature 
may  be  no  more  than  a  boy's,  he  shall  still  be  taller  than 
the  great  redwoods  of  California ;  his  height  shall  be  the 
height  of  great  resolution  and  love  and  faith  and  beauty 
and  knowledge  and  subtle  meditation ;  his  head  shall  be 
forever  among  the  stars. 

But  here  we  are  met  with  the  cry  of  freedom.  This 
poetry  is  free,  it  is  asserted,  because  it  is  independent  of 
form.  But  this  claim  is  also  too  late.  It  should  have 
been  made  at  least  before  the  French  Revolution.  We 
all  know  what  that  freedom  means  in  politics  which  is 
independent  of  form,  of  law.  It  means  myriad-fold 
slavery  to  a  mob.  As  in  politics,  so  in  art.  Once  for 
all,  in  art,  to  be  free  is  not  to  be  independent  of  any  form, 
it  is  to  be  master  of  many  forms.  Does  the  young  artist 
of  the  Whitman  school  fancy  that  he  is  free  because 
under  the  fond  belief  that  he  is  yielding  himself  to  nature, 
stopping  not  for  words  lest  he  may  fail  to  make  what 
Whitman  proudly  calls  "  a  savage  song,"  he  allows  him- 
self to  be  blown  about  by  every  wind  of  passion  ?  Is  a 
ship  free  because,  without  rudder  or  sail,  it  is  turned 
loose  to  the  winds,  and  has  no  master  but  nature? 
Nature  is  the  tyrant  of  tyrants.  Now,  just  as  that  free- 
dom of  the  ship  on  the  sea  means  shipwreck,  so  indepen- 
dence of  form  in  art  means  death.  Here  one  recurs 
with  pleasure  to  the  aphorism  cited  in  the  last  lecture : 
in  art,  as  elsewhere,  *'  he  who  will  not  answer  to  the  rud- 
der shall  answer  to  the  rocks."  I  find  all  the  great  art- 
ists of  time  striving  after  this  same  freedom  ;  but  it  is  not 
by  destroying,  it  is  by  extending  the  forms  of  art,  that 


The  Development  of  Personality       6i 

all  sane  and  sober  souls  hope  to  attain.  In  a  letter  of 
Beethoven's  to  the  Archduke  Rudolph,  written  in  1819, 
I  find  him  declaring  "  But  freedom  and  progress  are  our 
true  aim  in  the  world  of  art,  just  as  in  the  great  creation 
at  large." 

We  have  seen  how  in  the  creation  at  large  progress  is 
effected  by  the  continual  multiplication  of  new  forms. 
It  was  this  advance  which  Beethoven  wished  :  to  become 
master  of  new  and  more  beautiful  forms,  not  to  abolish 
form.  In  a  letter  of  his  to  Matthisson,  as  early  as  1800, 
accompanying  a  copy  of  Adelaide,  we  may  instructively 
gather  what  he  thought  of  this  matter :  "  Indeed  even 
now  I  send  you  Adelaide  with  a  feeling  of  timidity. 
You  know  yourself  what  changes  the  lapse  of  some  years 
brings  forth  in  an  artist  who  continues  to  make  progress ; 
the  greater  the  advances  we  make  in  art  the  less  are  we 
satisfied  with  our  works  of  an  early  date."  This  un- 
studied declaration  becomes  full  of  significance  when  we 
remember  that  this  same  Adelaide  is  still  held,  by  the 
common  consent  of  all  musicians,  to  be  the  most  perfect 
song- form  in  music  ;  and  it  is  given  to  young  composers 
as  a  type  and  model  from  which  all  other  forms  are  to 
be  developed.  We  may  sum  up  the  whole  matter  by 
applying  to  these  persons  who  desire  formlessness,  words 
which  were  written  of  those  who  have  been  said  to  desire 
death : 

"  Whatever  crazy  Sorrow  saith. 
No  life  that  breathes  with  human  breath 
Has  ever  truly  longed  for  death. 

"  'Tis  life  whereof  our  nerves  are  scant, 
O  life,  not  death,  for  which  we  pant ; 
More  life,  and  fuller,  that  I  want." 

In  art,  form  and  chaos  are  so  nearly  what  life  and 


St,  The  English  Novel 

death  are  in  nature,  that  we  do  not  greatly  change  this 
jtanza  if  we  read  : 

*Tis  form  whereof  our  art  is  scant, 
O  form,  not  chaos,  for  which  we  pant. 
More  form,  and  fuller,  that  I  want. 

I  find  some  deliverances  in  Epictetus  which  speak  so 
closely  to  more  than  one  of  the  points  just  discussed 
that  I  must  quote  a  sentence  or  two.  "  What  then,"  he 
says  in  the  chapter  "  About  Freedom,"  "  is  that  which 
makes  a  man  free  from  hindrance  and  makes  him  his 
own  master?  For  wealth  does  not  do  it,  nor  consulship, 
nor  provincial  government,  nor  royal  power;  but  some- 
thing else  must  be  discovered.  What  then  is  that  which 
when  we  write  makes  us  free  from  hindrance  and  unim- 
peded? The  knowledge  of  the  art  of  writing.  What 
then  is  it  (which  gives  freedom)  in  playing  the  lute? 
The  science  of  playing  the  lute."  If  Whitman's  doctrine 
is  true,  the  proper  method  of  acquiring  freedom  on  the 
lute  is  to  bring  lute-music  to  that  point  where  the  loud 
jangling  chord  produced  by  a  big  hand  sweeping  at  ran- 
dom across  the  strings  is  to  take  the  place  of  the  finical 
tunes  and  harmonies  now  held  in  esteem.  "  Therefore," 
continues  Epictetus,  "in  life,  also,  it  is  the  science  of 
life.  .  .  .  When  you  wish  the  body  to  be  sound,  is  it  in 
your  power  or  not  ?  —  It  is  not.  When  you  wish  it  to  be 
healthy?  Neither  is  thi§  in  my  power."  (I  complain  of 
Whitman's  democracy  that  it  has  no  provision  for  sick, 
or  small,  or  puny,  or  plain-featured,  or  hump-backed,  or 
any  deformed  people,  and  that  his  democracy  is  really 
the  worst  kind  of  aristocracy,  being  an  aristocracy  of 
nature's  favorites  in  the  matter  of  muscle.)  And  so  of 
estate,  house,  horses,  Hfe  and  death,  —  Epictetus  con- 
tinues ;  these  are  not  in  our  power,  they  cannot  make  us 


The  Development  of  Personality       6^ 

free.  So  that,  in  another  chapter,  he  cries :  *'  This  is 
the  true  athlete,  the  man  who  exercises  himself  against 
such  appearances.  Stay,  wretch,  do  not  be  carried  away. 
Great  is  the  combat,  divine  is  the  work :  it  is  for  king- 
ship, for  freedom,  for  happiness." 

And  lastly,  the  Poetry  of  the  Future  holds  that  all 
modern  poetry,  Tennyson  particularly,  is  dainty  and 
over-perfumed,  and  Whitman  speaks  of  it  with  that  con- 
tempt which  he  everywhere  affects  for  the  dandy.  But 
surely  —  I  do  not  mean  this  disrespectfully  —  what  age 
of  time  ever  yielded  such  a  dandy  as  the  founder  of  this 
school.  Whitman  himself?  The  simpering  beau  who  is 
the  product  of  the  tailor's  art  is  certainly  absurd  enough ; 
but  what  difference  is  there  between  that  and  the  other 
dandy-upside-down  who  from  equal  motives  of  affectation 
throws  away  coat  and  vest,  dons  a  slouch  hat,  opens  his 
shirt  so  as  to  expose  his  breast,  and  industriously  circu- 
lates his  portrait,  thus  taken,  in  his  own  books.  And 
this  dandyism  —  the  dandyism  of  the  roustabout  —  I 
find  in  Whitman's  poetry  from  beginning  to  end. 
Everywhere  it  is  conscious  of  itself,  everywhere  it  is 
analyzing  itself,  everywhere  it  is  posing  to  see  if  it  cannot 
assume  a  naive  and  striking  attitude,  everywhere  it  is 
screwing  up  its  eyes,  not  into  an  eyeglass  like  the  con- 
ventional dandy,  but  into  an  expression  supposed  to  be 
fearsomely  rough  and  barbaric  and  frightful  to  the  terror- 
stricken  reader,  and  it  is  almost  safe  to  say  that  one  half 
of  Whitman's  poetic  work  has  consisted  of  a  detailed 
description  of  the  song  he  is  going  to  sing.  It  is  the 
extreme  of  sophistication  in  writing. 

But  if  we  must  have  dandyism  in  our  art,  surely  the 
softer  sort,  which  at  least  leans  toward  decorum  and 
gentility,  is  preferable ;  for  that  at  worst  becomes  only 
laughable,  while  the  rude  dandyism,  when  it  does  acquire 


64  The  English  Novel 

a  factitious  interest  by  being  a  blasphemy  against  real 
manhood,  is  simply  tiresome. 

I  have  thus  dwelt  upon  these  claims  of  the  Whitman 
school,  not  so  much  because  of  any  intrinsic  weight  they 
possess,  as  because  they  are  advanced  in  such  taking  and 
sacred  names,  —  of  democracy,  of  manhood,  of  freedom, 
of  progress.  Upon  the  most  earnest  examination,  I  can 
find  it  nothing  but  wholly  undemocratic;  not  manful, 
but  dandy ;  not  free,  because  the  slave  of  nature ;  not 
progressive,  because  its  whole  momentum  is  derived  from 
the  physical-large  which  ceased  to  astonish  the  world 
ages  ago,  in  comparison  with  spiritual  greatness. 

Indeed,  this  matter  has  been  pushed  so  far,  with  the 
apparent,  but  wholly  unreal  sanction  of  so  many  influen- 
tial names,  that  in  speaking  to  those  who  may  be  poets 
of  the  future,  I  cannot  close  these  hasty  words  upon  the 
Whitman  school  without  a  fervent  protest,  in  the  name 
of  all  art  and  all  artists,  against  a  poetry  which  has 
painted  a  great  scrawling  picture  of  the  human  body 
and  has  written  under  it,  "  This  is  the  soul;  "  which  shouts 
a  profession  of  religion  in  every  line,  but  of  a  religion 
that,  when  examined,  reveals  no  tenet,  no  rubric,  save 
that  a  man  must  be  natural,  must  abandon  himself  to 
every  passion ;  and  which  constantly  roars  its  belief  in 
God,  but  with  a  camerado  air  as  if  it  were  patting  the 
Deity  on  the  back  and  bidding  Him  Cheer  up  and  hope 
for  further  encouragement. 

It  seems  like  a  curious  sarcasm  of  time  that  even  the 
form  of  Whitman's  poetry  is  not  poetry  of  the  future  but 
tends  constantly  into  the  rhythm  of 

"  Brimmanna  boda  abeod  eft  ongean," 

which  is  the  earliest  rhythm  of  our  poetry.  The  only 
difference  which  Whitman  makes  is  in  rejecting  the  allit- 


The  Development  of  Personality        65 

eration,  in  changing  the  line-division,  so  as  to  admit 
longer  lines,  and  the  allowance  of  much  liberty  in  inter- 
rupting this  general  rhythm  for  a  moment.  It  is  remark- 
able indeed  that  this  old  rhythm  is  still  distinctly  the 
prevalent  rhythm  of  English  prose.  Some  years  ago 
Walter  Savage  Landor  remarked  that  the  dactyl  was 
"  the  bindweed  of  English  prose,"  and  by  the  dactyl  he 
means  simply  a  word  of  three  syllables  with  the  accent 
on  the  first,  like  Brimmanna,     For  example : 

"  I  loaf  and  invite  my  soul ; 
I  lean  and  loaf  at  my  ease,  observing  a  spear  of  summer  grass. 
I  exist  as  I  am  —  that  is  enough ; 
If  no  other  in  the  world  be  aware,  I  sit  content; 
And  if  each  and  all  be  aware  I  sit  content. 
Washes  and  razors  for  foofoos,  and  for  me  freckles  and  a 
bristling  beard." 

"Walt  Whitman  am  I,  a  cosmos  of  mighty  Manhattan  the 
sun." 

We  are  here  arrived  at  a  very  fitting  point  to  pass  on 
and  consider  that  third  misconception  of  the  relation 
between  science  and  art  which  has  been  recently  formu- 
lated by  M.  Emile  Zola  in  his  work  called  Le  Roman 
Experimental.  Zola's  name  has  been  so  widely  asso- 
ciated with  a  certain  class  of  novels  that  I  am  unfortunately 
under  no  necessity  to  describe  them,  and  I  need  only 
say  that  the  work  in  question  is  a  formal  reply  to  a  great 
number  of  objections  which  have  come  from  many  quar- 
ters as  to  the  characters  and  events  which  Zola's  novels 
have  brought  before  the  public. 

His  book,  though  a  considerable  volume,  may  be  said 
to  consist  of  two  sentences  which  the  author  has  varied 
with  great  adroitness  into  many  forms.  These  two  sen- 
tences [  may  sum  up  as  follows:  (i)  every  novel  must 
hereafter  be  the  entirely  unimaginative  record  of  an  ex- 

S 


66  The  English  Novel 

periment  in  human  passion ;  and  (2)  every  writer  of  the 
Romantic  school  in  France,  particularly  Victor  Hugo,  is 
an  ass.  You  are  not  to  suppose  that  in  this  last  sentiment 
I  have  strengthened  Zola's  expressions.  A  single  quota- 
tion will  show  sufficient  authority.  As  for  example 
where  M.  Zola  cries  out  to  those  who  are  criticising 
him  :  "  Every  one  says  :  *  Ah  yes,  the  naturalists  !  they 
are  those  men  with  dirty  hands  who  want  all  novels  to 
be  written  in  slang,  and  choose  the  most  disgusting  sub- 
jects.' Not  at  all !  you  lie  !  .  .  .  Do  not  say  that  I 
am  idiot  enough  to  wish  to  paint  nothing  but  the 
gutter." 

But  with  this  quarrel  we  are  not  here  concerned ;  I 
simply  wish  to  examine  in  the  briefest  way  Zola's 
proposition  to  convert  the  novel  into  a  work  of  science. 
His  entire  doctrine  may  be  fairly,  indeed  amply  gathered 
in  the  following  quotations  : 

"  We  continue  by  our  observations  and  experiments  the 
work  of  the  physiologist,  who  has  himself  employed  that  of 
the  physicist  and  the  chemist.  We  after  a  fashion  pursue 
scientific  psychology  in  order  to  complete  scientific  physi- 
ology ;  and  in  order  to  complete  the  evolution,  we  need  only 
carry  to  the  study  of  nature  and  man  the  invaluable  tool  of 
the  experimental  method.  In  a  word,  we  should  work  upon 
characters,  passions,  human  and  social  facts,  as  the  physi- 
cist and  chemist  work  with  inorganic  bodies,  as  the  physi- 
ologist works  with  living  organisms.  Determinism  controls 
everything. 

"  This,  then,  is  what  constitutes  the  experimental  novel, — 
to  understand  the  mechanism  of  human  phenomena,  to  show 
the  machinery  of  intellectual  and  emotional  manifestations 
as  physiology  shall  explain  them  to  us  under  the  influence 
of  heredity  and  surrounding  circumstances;  then  to  show 
man  living  in  the  social  milieu  which  he  has  himself  produced, 
and  which  he  modifies  every  day,  while  at  the  same  time 
experiencing  in  his  turn  a  continual  transformation.    So  we 


The  Development  of  Personality       67 

rest  on  physiology ;  we  take  man  isolated  from  the  hands  of 
the  physiologist  to  continue  the  solution  of  the  problem  and 
to  solve  scientifically  the  question,  How  men  live  as  members 
of  society.  —  We  are,  in  a  word,  experimental  philosophers, 
showing  by  experiment  how  a  passion  exhibits  itself  in  certain 
social  surroundings.  The  day  when  we  shall  understand  the 
mechanism  of  this  passion,  it  may  be  treated,  reduced,  made 
as  inoffensive  as  possible." 

These  propositions  need  not  detain  us  long.  In  the 
first  place,  let  us  leave  the  vagueness  of  abstract  assertions 
and,  coming  down  to  the  concrete,  let  us  ask  who 
is  to  make  the  experiment  recorded  in  the  novel  ?  Zola 
says,  "  We  (we  novelists)  are  experimental  philosophers, 
showing  by  experiment  how  a  passion  exhibits  itself  in 
certain  social  surroundings."  Very  well;  in  one  of 
Zola's  most  popular  novels,  the  heroine  Nana,  after  a 
remarkable  career,  dies  of  small-pox ;  and  a  great  natural- 
istic ado  is  made  over  this  death.  A  correspondent  of 
the  Herald^  writing  from  Paris,  says :  "  In  a  very  few 
days  we  are  to  be  treated  to  the  stage  version  of  Nana, 
at  the  Ambigu.  .  .  .  Nana,  it  will  be  remembered,  dies  at 
the  end  of  the  story,  of  small-pox.  We  are  to  be  given 
every  incident  of  the  agony  —  every  mark  of  the  small-pox. 
Pretty  Mile.  Massin  (who  is  to  play  this  death-scene)  is  to 
be  the  crowning  attraction  of  the  new  play.  .  .  .  We  shall 
be  shown  a  real  death  of  small-pox,  or  the  nearest  possible 
approach  to  it.  Mile.  Massin,  who  is  to  sustain  the  pleasing 
part  of  the  *  heroine '  will  make  her  pretty  face  hideous 
for  the  occasion.  At  half  past  1 1  every  evening  she  will 
issue  from  behind  the  drapery  of  a  bed,  clad  only  in  the 
most  indispensable  of  nightly  raiment  —  and  that  *  in  most 
admired  disorder '  —  her  neck,  cheeks  and  forehead  dis- 
figured, changed  and  unrecognizable  for  simulated  pus- 
tules.    At  twenty  minutes  to  1 2  the  pustules  will  be  too 


68  The  English  Novel 

much  for  her,  and  she  will  expire.  At  a  quarter  to  1 2 
the  deafening  applause  of  the  public  will  call  her  to  life 
again,  and  she  will  bow  her  acknowledgments." 

Applying  Zola's  theory,  sociology  is  to  find  here  a 
very  instructive  record  of  how  a  woman  such  as  Nana 
would  comport  herself  when  dying  of  small -pox;  and 
furthermore,  his  description  of  it  must  be  an  exact  record 
of  an  experiment  in  death  from  small-pox  conducted  by 
M.  Zola  in  person.  But  now  recurring  to  our  question 
let  us  ask,  how  could  M.  Zola  conduct  this  experiment? 
It  would  certainly  be  inconvenient  for  him  to  catch  the 
small-pox  and  die,  with  a  view  to  recording  his  sensa- 
tions ;  and  yet  it  is  perfectly  apparent  that  the  conditions 
of  scientific  experiment  could  not  be  satisfied  in  any 
other  way.  M.  Zola  would  probably  reply  with  effusion, 
that  he  had  taken  pains  to  go  to  a  small-pox  hospital  and 
to  study  with  great  care  the  behavior  of  a  patient  dying 
with  that  disease.  But,  we  immediately  rejoin,  this  is 
very  far  from  what  his  theory  bound  him  to  show  us  :  his 
theory  bound  him  to  show  us  not  some  person,  any 
person,  dying  of  small-pox,  but  Nana  with  all  her  indi- 
viduality derived  from  heredity  and  from  her  own  spon- 
taneous variation  —  it  was  Nana  dying  of  small-pox  that 
he  must  set  before  us ;  one  person  dies  one  way  and 
another  person  dies  another  way,  even  of  the  same  dis- 
ease ;  Smith,  a  very  tragic  person,  would  make  a  death- 
scene  full  of  tragic  message  and  gesture ;  Brown  might 
close  his  eyes  and  pass  without  a  word ;  Nana,  particu- 
larly, with  her  peculiar  career  and  striking  individuality, 
would  naturally  make  a  peculiar  and  striking  death. 
Now  since  Nana  is  purely  a  creation  of  Zola,  (unless  in- 
deed the  novel  is  a  biography,  which  is  not  pretended) 
Zola  is  the  only  person  in  the  world  who  understands 
Nana's  feelings  in  death  or  on  any  occasion ;  and  this 


The  Development  of  Personality        69 

being  so  it  is  simply  impossible  that  Zola  could  make  a 
scientific  experiment  of  Nana's  death  from  small-pox 
without  dying  himself.  This  seems  so  absurd  that  one 
goes  back  to  Le  Roman  Expirimental  to  see  if  Zola's 
idea  of  a  scientific  experiment  has  not  something  pecu- 
liar about  it  j  and  one  quickly  finds  that  it  has.  It  is  in 
fact  interesting  to  observe  that  though  Zola  has  this 
word  experiment  continually  on  his  lips,  yet  he  never 
means  that  the  novelist  is  to  conduct  a  real,  gross,  down- 
right, actual  brute  of  an  experiment ;  and  the  word  with 
him  is  wholly  Pickwickian,  signifying  no  more  than  that 
the  novelist,  availing  himself  of  such  realistic  helps  as  he 
can  find  in  hospitals  and  the  like,  is  to  evolve  therefrom 
something  which  he  believes  to  be  the  natural  course  of 
things.  Examine  the  book  wherever  you  may,  the 
boasted  experiment,  the  pivot  of  the  whole  system,  fades 
into  this. 

The  experiment  of  Zola  is  as  if  a  professor  of  chemistry, 
knowing  something  of  the  properties  of  given  substances, 
desiring  to  see  how  a  certain  molecule  would  behave 
itself  in  the  presence  of  a  certain  other  molecule, 
hitherto  untried  in  this  connection,  instead  of  going  into 
his  laboratory  and  bringing  the  molecules  together  and 
observing  what  they  actually  did,  should  quietly  sit 
before  his  desk  and  write  ofi"  a  comfortable  account  of 
how  he  thought  these  molecules  would  behave,  judging 
from  his  previous  knowledge  of  their  properties.  It  is 
still  more  interesting  to  find  that  Zola  is  apparently 
unconscious  of  the  difference  between  these  two  modes 
of  experiment.  About  this  unconsciousness  I  have  my 
own  theory,  I  think  it  entirely  probable  that  if  these 
two  kinds  of  experiment  were  described  to  Zola  he 
would  maintain  with  perfect  good  faith  that  they  were 
exactly  the  same.    There  is  a  phase  of  error  —  perhaps 


70  The  English  Novel 

we  may  call  it  hallucination  —  in  which  certain  sorts  of 
minds  come  to  believe  that  two  things  which  have  been 
habitually  associated  are  always  the  same.  For  instance, 
a  friend  of  mine  has  told  me  that  a  certain  estimable 
teacher  of  the  French  language,  who,  after  carrying  on 
his  vocation  for  many  years  during  which  English  and 
French  became  equally  instinctive  tongues  to  him,  was 
accustomed  to  maintain  that  English  and  French  were 
absolutely  one  and  the  same  language.  "When  you 
say  water ^^  he  was  accustomed  to  argue  to  my  friend, 
"you  mean  water:  when  I  say  Peau  I  mean  water: 
water — VeaUy  Veau  —  water ^  do  you  not  see?  We 
mean  the  same  thing,  it  is  the  same  language." 

However  this  may  be,  nothing  is  clearer  than  that 
Zola's  conception  of  an  experiment  is  what  I  have 
described  it  —  namely,  an  evolving,  from  the  inner 
consciousness,  of  what  the  author  thinks  the  experimental 
subjects  would  do  under  given  circumstances.  Here  are 
some  of  Zola's  own  words :  and  surely  nothing  more 
naive  was  ever  uttered.  "  The  writer  "  (of  the  novel) 
"employs  both  observation  and  experiment.  The  ob- 
server gives  the  facts  as  he  has  observed  them  .  .  . 
and  establishes  the  solid  ground  on  which  his  characters 
shall  march,  and  the  phenomena  shall  develop  them- 
selves. Then  the  experimenter  appears  and  conducts  the 
experiment;  that  is  to  say  "  (I  am  quoting  from  M.  Zola) 
"  he  moves  the  characters  in  a  particular  story  to  show 
that  the  sequence  of  facts  will  be  such  as  is  determined  by 
the  study  of  phenomena, ^^  That  is  to  say,  to  carry  Zola's 
"  experiment  "  into  chemistry :  knowing  something  of 
chlorine  and  something  of  hydrogen  separately,  a  chemist 
who  wishes  to  know  their  behavior  under  each  other's 
influence  may  "  experiment "  upon  that  behavior  by 
giving  his  opinion  as  to  what  chlorine  and  hydrogen 
would  likely  do  under  given  circumstances. 


The  Development  of  Personality       71 

It  seems  incredible,  but  it  is  logically  beyond  question, 
that  by  this  short  process  we  have  got  to  the  bottom  of 
this  whole  elaborate  system  of  the  Experimental  Novel 
and  have  found  that  it  is  nothing  but  a  repetition  of  the 
old,  old  trick  of  the  hand  of  Jacob  and  the  voice  of  Esau. 
Think  how  much  self-sacrifice  and  labor,  of  how  many 
noble  and  brave  spirits,  from  Horrox  and  Hooke  in 
the  seventeenth  century  down  to  the  hundreds  of  scien- 
tific men  who  at  this  moment  are  living  obscure  and 
laborious  lives  in  the  search  of  truth,  —  think,  I  say,  how 
much  fervent  and  pious  labor  has  gone  to  invest  the 
mere  name  of  scientific  experiment  with  that  sacredness 
under  which  the  Zola  school  is  now  claiming  the  rights 
and  privileges  of  science  for  what  we  have  seen  is  not 
science,  and  what,  we  might  easily  see  if  it  were  worth 
showing,  is  mere  corruption.  The  hand  is  the  hand  of 
science  :  but  the  voice  is  the  voice  of  a  beast. 

To  many,  this  animal  voice  has  seemed  a  portento'as 
sound.  But  if  we  think  what  kind  of  beast  it  is,  we 
cease  to  fear.  George  Eliot,  somewhere  in  Adam  Bede, 
has  a  mot:  when  a  donkey  sets  out  to  sing,  everybody 
knows  beforehand  what  the  tune  will  be.  This  voice  has 
been  heard  many  times  before.  Long  before  Zola  came 
on  the  stage,  I  find  Schiller  crying  in  his  sweet  silver 
tones  to  some  who  were  likewise  misusing  both  art  and 
science :  "  Unhappy  mortal,  that,  with  science  and  art, 
the  noblest  of  all  instruments,  effectest  and  attemptest 
nothing  more  than  the  day-drudge  with  the  meanest; 
that  in  the  domain  of  perfect  Freedom  bearest  about  in 
thee  the  spirit  of  a  slave."  In  these  words,  Schiller 
has  at  once  prophesied  and  punished  the  Experimental 
Novel. 

But  there  is  another  view  of  Zola's  claims  which  leads 
us  into   some   thoughts   particularly   instructive  at  the 


72  The  English  Novel 

present  time,  and  will  carry  us  very  directly  to  the  more 
special  studies  which  will  engage  our  attention. 

After  the  views  of  form  which  have  been  presented  to 
you,  it  will  not  be  necessary  for  me  to  argue  that  even  if 
Zola's  Experimental  Novel  were  a  physical  possibility, 
it  would  be  an  artistic  absurdity.  If  you  could  make  a 
scientific  record  of  actual  experiments  in  human  passion, 
very  well :  but  why  should  we  call  that  record  a  novel, 
if  we  do  not  call  Professor  Huxley's  late  work  on  the 
crayfish  a  novel,  or  if  we  do  not  call  any  physician's 
report  of  some  specially  interesting  clinical  experience 
to  the  Medical  and  Surgical  Journal  a  novel  ? 

Here  we  are  put  upon  securing  for  ourselves  perfectly 
clear  conceptions  as  to  certain  relations  between  that  so- 
called  poetic  activity  and  scientific  activity  of  the  human 
mind  which  find  themselves  in  a  singularly  interesting 
contact  in  the  true  and  worthy  novel  which  we  are  going 
to  study.  Merely  reminding  you  of  the  distinction  with 
which  every  one  is  more  or  less  familiar  theoretically,  that 
that  activity  which  we  variously  call  "  poetic,"  "  imagina- 
tive," or  "  creative,"  is  essentially  synthetic,  is  a  process 
of  putting  together,  while  the  scientific  process  seems 
distinctively  analytic,  or  a  tearing  apart;  let  us  pass 
from  this  idea  to  those  applications  of  the  poetic  faculty 
which  are  made  whenever  a  scientific  searcher  goes 
further  than  the  mere  collection  of  facts,  to  classify  them 
and  to  effect  generalizations.  This  is  an  activity  of  what 
is  well  called  the  scientific  imagination.  Now  what  is 
the  difference  between  a  work  of  the  scientific  imagination 
and  a  work  of  the  poetic  imagination?  Without  going 
into  subtleties,  I  think  the  shortest  way  to  gain  a  per- 
fectly clear  working-idea  of  this  difference  is  to  confine 
our  attention  to  the  differing  results  of  these  activities : 
the  scientific  imagination  results  in  a  formula,  whose 


The  Development  of  Personality       73 

paramount  purpose  is  to  be  as  short  and  as  comprehen- 
sive as  possible;  the  poetic  imagination  results  in  a 
created  form  or  forms,  whose  paramount  purpose  is  to 
be  as  beautiful  and  as  comprehensive  as  possible.  For 
example,  the  well-known  formula  of  evolution :  that 
evolution  is  a  process  from  the  uniform  and  indefinite  to 
the  multiform  and  definite  :  that  is  a  result  of  long  efforts 
of  the  scientific  imagination :  while  on  the  other  hand 
Tennyson's  In  Memoriam^  in  which  we  have  deep  mat- 
ters discussed  in  the  most  beautiful  words  and  the  most 
musical  forms  of  verse,  is  a  poetic  work. 

And  now  if  we  pass  one  step  farther  and  consider 
what  would  happen  if  the  true  scientific  activity  and  the 
true  poetic  activity  should  engage  themselves  upon  one 
and  the  same  set  of  facts,  we  arrive  at  the  novel. 

The  great  modern  novelist  is  at  once  scientific  and 
poetic  :  and  here,  it  seems  to  me,  in  the  novel,  we  have 
the  meeting,  the  reconciliation,  the  kiss,  of  science  and 
poetry.  George  Eliot,  having  with  those  keen  eyes  of 
hers  collected  and  analyzed  and  sorted  many  facts  of 
British  life,  binds  them  together  into  a  true  poetic 
synthesis,  in,  for  instance,  Daniel  Deronda,  where  instead 
of  giving  us  the  ultimate  relations  of  all  her  facts  in  the 
shape  of  a  formula,  like  that  of  evolution,  she  gives  them 
to  us  in  the  creation  of  beautiful  Gwendolen  Harleth  and 
all  the  other  striking  forms  which  move  through  the 
book  as  embodiments  in  flesh  and  blood  of  the  scientific 
relations  between  all  her  facts. 

Perhaps  we  shall  find  it  convenient  here,  too,  to  base 
perfectly  clear  ideas  of  the  three  existing  schools  of 
novel-writing  upon  these  foregoing  principles.  It  has 
been  common  for  some  time  to  hear  of  the  Romantic  and 
the  ReaUstic  school,  and  lately  a  third  term  has  been 
brought  into  use  by  the  Zola  section  who  call  themselves 


74  The  English  Novel 

the  Naturalistic  school.  It  is  easy  to  see  that  these  terms 
have  arisen  from  the  greater  or  less  prominence  given 
now  to  the  poetic  activity,  now  to  the  scientific  activity, 
in  novel  writing ;  those  who  most  rely  on  the  poetic  being 
the  Romantic,  those  on  a  combination  of  the  poetic  and 
scientific  the  Realistic,  and  those  who  entirely  reject  the 
imagination  (as  Zola  professes  to  do)  the  Naturalistic 
school)  At  all  events,  then,  not  troubling  ourselves 
with  the  Naturalists  who,  as  we  have  seen,  call  that  an 
experiment  which  is  only  an  imaginative  product,  we 
are  prepared  to  study  the  novel  as  a  work  in  which 
science  is  carried  over  into  the  region  of  art.  We  are  not 
to  regard  the  novel  therefore  as  aught  else  but  a  work  of 
art,  and  the  novelist  as  an  artist. 

One  rejoices  to  find  our  wise  Emerson  discussing  the 
novel  in  this  light  purely,  in  his  very  suggestive  essay  on 
Books.  "  Whilst  the  prudential  and  economical  tone  of 
society  starves  the  imagination,  affronted  Nature  gets 
such  indemnity  as  she  may.  The  novel  is  that  allowance 
and  frolic  the  imagination  finds.  Everything  else  pins 
it  down,  and  men  flee  for  redress  to  Byron,  Scott, 
Disraeli,  Dumas,  Sand,  Balzac,  Dickens,  Thackeray  and 
Reade. 

"  The  imagination  infuses  a  certain  volatility  and  intoxi- 
cation. It  has  a  flute  which  sets  the  atoms  of  our  frame 
in  a  dance,  like  planets ;  and,  once  so  liberated,  the 
whole  man  reeling  drunk  to  the  music,  they  never  quite 
subside  to  their  old  stony  state." 

Nay,  we  have  such  beautiful  novels  in  the  world, 
novels  far  from  the  experimental  romances  by  which  we 
are  not  perfected  but  infected  {non perficitur^  inficitur),  as 
old  Burton  quotes  in  the  Anatomy ^  novels  in  which 
scientific  harmony  has  passed  into  its  heavenly  after-life 
of  wisdom,  novels  in  which  the  pure  sense  of  poetic 


The  Development  of  Personality       75 

beauty  is  so  tenderly  drawn  out  that  I  love  to  think  of 
them  in  the  terms  which  our  most  beauty-loving  of 
modem  poets  has  appUed  to  beauty,  in  the  opening 
of  Endymion : 

"  A  thing  of  beauty  is  a  joy  forever: 
Its  loveliness  increases ;  it  will  never 
Pass  into  nothingness ;  but  still  will  keep 
A  bower  quiet  for  us,  and  a  sleep 
Full  of  sweet  dreams,  and  health,  and  quiet  breathing. 
Therefore,  on  every  morrow,  are  we  wreathing 
A  flowery  band  to  bind  us  to  the  earth, 
Spite  of  despondence,  of  the  inhuman  dearth 
Of  noble  natures,  of  the  gloomy  days. 
Of  all  the  unhealthy  and  o'erdarkened  ways 
Made  for  our  searching  :  yes,  in  spite  of  all, 
Some  shape  of  beauty  moves  away  the  pall 
From  our  dark  spirits.     Such  the  sun,  the  moon, 
Trees  old  and  young,  sprouting  a  shady  boon 
For  simple  sheep ;  and  such  are  daffodils 
With  the  green  world  they  live  in  ;  and  clear  rills 
That  for  themselves  a  cooling  covert  make 
'Gainst  the  hot  season  ;  the  mid-forest  brake, 
Rich  with  a  sprinkling  of  fair  musk-rose  blooms; 
And  such  too  is  the  grandeur  of  the  dooms 
We  have  imagined  for  the  mighty  dead  ;, 
All  lovely  tales  that  we  have  heard  or  read; 
An  endless  fountain  of  immortal  drink, 
Pouring  unto  us  from  the  heaven's  brink." 


^6  The  English  Novel 


IV 


The  points  discussed  at  our  last  meeting  were  mainly 
of  such  a  nature  that  I  need  not  occupy  your  time  with 
the  detailed  review  which  has  seemed  advisable  here- 
tofore. 

You  will  remember,  in  a  general  way,  that  we  finished 
examining  the  claims  of  the  poetry  of  the  future,  as 
presented  by  Whitman,  and  found  reason  to  believe 
from  several  trains  of  argument  that  its  alleged  demo- 
cratic spirit  was  based  on  a  political  misconception,  its 
religious  spirit  was  no  more  than  that  general  feeling  of 
good  fellowship  and  cameraderie  which  every  man  of 
the  world  knows  to  be  the  commonest  of  virtues  among 
certain  classes,  its  strength  rested  upon  purely  physical 
qualifications  which  have  long  ago  practically  ceased  to 
be  strength,  its  contempt  for  dandyism  was  itself  only 
a  cruder  dandyism,  and  its  proposed  substitution  of  power 
for  beauty  not  only  an  artistic  blindness  but  a  historical 
error  as  to  the  general  progress  of  this  world,  which  has 
been  from  strength  to  beauty  ever  since  the  ponderous 
old  gods  Ouranus  and  Gaea  —  representatives  of  rude 
strength — gave  way  to  the  more  orderly  (that  is,  more 
beautiful)  reign  of  Saturn,  and  he  in  turn  to  the  still 
more  orderly  and  beauty-representing  Jupiter,  whom 
Chaucer  has  called  the  "  fadyr  of  delicacye." 

Passing  thus  from  the  Whitman  school,  we  attacked 
that  third  misconception  of  literary  form  which  had 
taken  the  shape  of  the  so-called  naturalistic  school,  a» 


The  Development  of  Personality       77 

led  by  Zola  in  his  novels  and  defended  by  him  in  his 
recent  work,  The  Experimental  Novel,  Here  we  quickly 
discovered  that  if  the  term  *' experiment "  were  used  by 
this  school  in  its  ordinary  and  scientific  sense,  it  would 
in  a  large  number  of  cases  involve  conditions  which 
would  exterminate  the  authors  of  the  projected  experi- 
mental novels  often  at  an  early  stage  of  the  plot ;  but 
that  secondly,  this  inconvenience  was  avoided  through 
the  very  peculiar  meaning  which  was  attached  to  the 
word  by  this  school,  and  which  reveals  that  they  make 
no  more  use  of  experiment,  in  point  of  fact,  than  any 
one  of  the  numerous  novelists  who  have  for  years  been 
in  the  habit  of  studying  real  life  and  nature  as  the  basis 
of  their  work.  In  short,  it  appeared  that  to  support  the 
propriety  of  circulating  such  books  by  calling  them  ex- 
perimental novels,  was  as  if  a  man  should  sell  profitable 
poison  under  the  name  of  scientific  milk,  and  claim 
therefor  both  the  gratitude  of  society  and  the  privileges 
of  science.  Finally,  supplying  ourselves  with  clear  ideas 
as  to  the  difference  between  what  has  become  so  well 
known  in  modern  times  as  the  scientific  imagination  and 
the  poetic  imagination,  we  determined  to  regard  the 
novel  as  a  true  work  of  art,  and  the  novelist  as  an  artist, 
by  reason  of  the  created  forms  in  the  novel  which  were 
shown  to  be  the  distinctive  outcome  of  the  poetical  imagi- 
nation as  opposed  to  the  formula  which  is  the  distinctive 
outcome  of  the  scientific  imagination.  Nevertheless,  in 
view  of  the  circumstance  that  the  facts  embodied  in  these 
forms  are  facts  which  must  have  been  collected  by  a 
genuine  exercise  of  the  true  scientific  faculty  of  observ- 
ing and  classifying,  we  were  compelled  to  regard  the 
novel  as  a  joint  product  of  science  and  art,  ranking  as 
art  by  virtue  of  its  final  purely  artistic  outcome  in  the 
shape  of  beautiful  created  forms. 


7  8  The  English  Novel 

It  is  with  a  sense  of  relief  that  one  turns  away  from 
what  I  fear  has  seemed  the  personal  and  truculent  tone 
of  the  last  lecture  —  an  appearance  almost  inseparable 
from  the  fact  that  certain  schools  of  writing  have  become 
represented  by  the  names  of  their  living  founders,  and 
which  would,  indeed,  have  prevented  your  present  lec- 
turer from  engaging  in  the  discussion  had  not  his  reluc- 
tance been  overwhelmed  by  the  sacred  duty  of  protesting 
against  all  this  forcible  occupation  of  the  temple  of  art 
by  those  who  have  come  certainly  not  for  worship  —  it  is 
with  a  sense  of  relief  that  one  turns  from  this  to  pursue 
the  more  gracious  and  general  studies  which  will  now 
occupy  us. 

According  to  the  plan  already  sketched :  having  now 
acquired  some  clear  fundamental  conceptions  of  the  cor- 
relations among  form,  science,  art,  and  the  like  notions 
often  so  vaguely  used,  we  are  next  to  inquire,  as  our  first 
main  line  of  research  :  Is  it  really  true  that  what  was 
explained  as  the  growth  in  human  personality  is  the  con- 
tinuing single  principle  of  human  progress,  is  it  really 
true  that  the  difference  between  the  time  of  ^schylus 
and  the  time  of  (say)  George  Eliot  is  the  difference  in  the 
strength  with  which  the  average  man  feels  the  scope  and 
sovereignty  of  his  ego?  For  upon  this  fundamental 
point  necessarily  depends  our  final  proposition  that  the 
modern  novel  is  itself  the  expression  of  this  intensified 
personality,  and  an  expression  which  could  only  be  made 
by  greatly  extending  the  form  of  the  Greek  drama. 
Pursuing  our  custom  of  leaving  the  abstract  and  plung- 
ing into  the  concrete  as  soon  as  possible,  let  us  determine 
this  question  by  endeavoring  to  find  some  special  notable 
works  of  antique  and  of  modern  times  in  which  substan- 
tially the  same  subject  matter  has  been  treated ;  let  us 
then  compare  the  difference  in  treatment,  let  us  summar- 


The  Development  of  Personality       79 

ize  the  picture  of  things  evidently  existing  in  the  old,  as 
contrasted  with  the  modern  author's  and  reader's  minds ; 
and  finally  let  us  see  whether  the  differences  thus  emerg- 
ing will  not  force  themselves  upon  us  as  differences 
growing  out  of  personality.  For  the  purposes  of  this 
comparison  I  have  thought  that  the  Prometheus  Bound 
of  ^schylus,  the  Prometheus  Unbound  of  Shelley,  and 
the  Prince  Deukalion  of  Bayard  Taylor  offered  inviting 
resources  as  works  which  treat  substantially  the  same 
story,  although  the  first  was  written  some  two  thousand 
three  hundred  years  before  the  last  two.  Permit  me 
then,  in  beginning  this  comparison,  to  set  before  you 
these  three  works  in  the  broadest  possible  sketch  by 
reading  from  each  here  and  there  a  line  such  as  may 
bring  the  action  freshly  before  you  and  at  the  same  time 
elucidate  specially  the  differences  in  treatment  we  are  in 
search  of.  As  I  now  run  rapidly  through  the  Prometheus 
of  ^schylus,  I  ask  you  to  bear  along  in  mind  the  precise 
nature  of  this  spontaneous  variation  between  man  and  man 
which  I  was  at  some  pains  to  define  in  my  first  lecture ; 
and  perhaps  I  may  profitably  extend  the  partial  idea  there 
given  by  adopting  a  pretty  fancy  which  I  find  in  No.  44 
of  Tennyson's  In  Memoriam,  and  carrying  it  to  a  larger 
sphere  than  there  intended.  The  poet  is  here  expressing 
the  conception  that  perhaps  the  main  use  of  this  present 
life  of  ours  is  for  each  one  to  learn  himself —  possibly  as 
preparatory  to  learning  other  things  hereafter.     He  says ; 

"  The  baby  new  to  earth  and  sky 

What  time  his  tender  palm  is  prest 
Against  the  circle  of  the  breast, 
Has  never  thought  that  *  this  is  I :  * 

"  But  as  he  grows  he  gathers  much, 

And  learns  the  use  of  *  I '  and  '  me,* 
And  finds  '  I  am  not  what  I  see, 
And  other  than  the  things  I  touch.* 


8o  The  English  Novel 

**  So  rounds  he  to  a  separate  mind 

From  whence  clear  memory  may  begin, 
As  thro*  the  frame  that  binds  him  in 
His  isolation  grows  defined. 

"This  use  may  lie  in  blood  and  breath, 

Which  else  were  fruitless  of  their  due, 
Had  man  to  learn  himself  anew 
Beyond  the  second  birth  of  Death." 

If  we  extend  the  process  of  growth  here  described 
as  of  a  single  child  passing  through  a  single  life  to  the 
collective  process  of  growth  effected  by  humanity  from 
age  to  age,  we  have  quite  clearly  the  principle  whose 
light  I  wish  to  shed  upon  our  comparison  of  the  works 
I  have  named.  Just  as  the  child  learns  to  know  himself 
—  "  that  I  am  I  "  —  so  man  comes  in  the  course  of  time 
to  feel  more  and  more  distinctly,  I  am  I ;  and  the  growth 
of  this  feeling  continually  uproots  his  old  relations  to 
things  and  brings  about  new  relations  with  new  forms  to 
clothe  them  in. 

One  may  say  indeed  that  this  recognition  of  the 
supreme  finality  of  the  ego  feeling  among  modem  men 
seems  a  curious  and  not  unrelated  counterpart  of  the 
theory  by  which  the  modem  physicist,  in  order  to  ex- 
plain his  physical  world,  divides  it  into  atoms  which 
atoms  are  themselves  indivisible.  We  have  here  the 
perplexing  problem  which  in  the  poem  De  Profundis^ 
partially  read  to  you,  was  poetically  called  "  the  pain  of 
this  divisible-indivisible  world."  To  explain  the  world, 
whether  the  moral  or  the  physical  world,  we  must 
suppose  it  divisible  into  atoms ;  to  explain  the  atom,  we 
must  suppose  that  indivisible.  Let  us  see  then  in  what 
form  this  "  pain  of  the  divisible-indivisible  world  "  with 
all  its  attendant  pains  of  contradiction  between  fate  and 
free  will,  —  between  the  Infinite  Personality,  which  should 


The  Development  of  Personality        8i 

seem  boundless,  and  the  finite  personality  which  never- 
theless seems  to  bound  it,  —  let  us  see,  I  say,  under  what 
explicit  forms  this  pain  appears  in  the  Prometheus  Bound, 
for  alas  it  was  an  old  grief  when  iEschylus  was  a  baby. 
Here,  then,  in  the  centre  of  the  stage  lies  the  gigantic 
figure  of  Prometheus,  (let  us  fancy,)  stark,  prostrate, 
proud,  unmoving  throughout  the  whole  action.  Two 
ministers  of  Jove,  Might  and  Force,  have  him  in  charge, 
and  Hephaestus — the  god  more  commonly  known  as 
Vulcan  —  stands  by  with  chain,  hammer  and  bolt.  Might 
acquaints  us  at  once  with  what  is  toward. 

"  At  length  the  utmost  bound  of  earth  we've  reached. 
This  Scythian  soil,  this  wild  untrodden  waste. 
Hephaestus,  now  Jove's  high  behests  demand 
Thy  care ;  to  these  steep,  cliffy  rocks  bind  down 
With  close-linked  chains  of  during  adamant 
This  daring  wretch.    For  he  the  bright  rayed  fire, 
Mother  of  arts  ..... 

Filched  from  the  gods  and  gave  to  mortals.    Here 

Let  his  pride  learn  to  bow  to  Jove  supreme, 
And  love  men  well  but  love  them  not  too  much." 

Hephaestus  proceeds  to  chain  him,  but  with  many  pro- 
tests, not  only  because  Prometheus'  act  seems  over- 
punished,  but  because  he  is  Prometheus'  kinsman. 

"  Would  that  some  other  hand," 

he  cries, 

**  Had  drawn  the  lot 
To  do  this  deed  I* 

To  which  Might  replies 

**  All  things  may  be,  but  this : 
To  dictate  to  the  gods.    There's  one  that's  free, 
One  only  —  Jove." 

6 


82  The  English  Novel 

And  Hephaestus  sullenly  acquiesces,  as  he  beats  away 
at  his  task, 

"  I  know  it,  and  am  dumb." 

Amid  similar  talk  —  of  protest  from  Vulcan  and  piti- 
less menace  from  Might  —  the  great  blacksmith  proceeds 
to  force  an  adamantine  bolt  through  the  breast  of  Pro- 
metheus, then  to  nail  his  feet  to  the  rock,  and  so  at  last 
cries,  in  relief, 

"  Let  us  away.    He's  fettered,  limb  and  thew." 

But  Might  must  have  his  last  pitiless  speech. 

"There  lie," 

he  exults,  — 

"  And  feed  thy  pride  on  this  bare  rock, 
Filching  gods'  gifts  for  mortal  men.     What  man 
Shall  free  thee  from  these  woes  ?  Thou  hast  been  called 
In  vain  the  Provident : " 

(fro-vident,  same  as  pro-metheus,  he  who  looks  ahead, 
who  provides,  the  provident) 

"  had  thy  soul  possessed 
The  virtue  of  thy  name,  thou  had'st  foreseen 
These  cunning  toils,  and  had'st  unwound  thee  from  them." 

Here  all  depart  but  Prometheus.  Up  to  this  time  the 
Titan  has  maintained  a  proud  silence.  He  now  breaks 
into  that  large  invocation  which  seems  still  to  assault  our 
physical  ears  across  the  twenty  odd  centuries. 

"  O  divine  iEther,  and  swift-winged  Winds, 
And  Fountains  of  the  rivers  and  multitudinous 
Laughter  of  ocean,  and  thou  Earth, 
Born  mother  of  us  all,  and  thou  bright  round 
Of  the  all-seeing  Sun,  you  I  invoke  I 
Behold  what  ignominy  of  causeless  wrongs 
I  suffer  from  the  gods,  myself  a  god  ! " 


The  Development  of  Personality       83 

(This,  by  the  way,  is  one  of  those  passages  which  our 
elder  poets  seem  to  have  regarded  as  somehow  lying 
outside  the  pale  of  moral  law — like  umbrellas  —  and 
which  they  have  therefore  appropriated  without  a  thought 
of  blushing.  Byron,  in  Manfred,  and  Shelley,  in  his 
Prometheus  Unbound^  have  quite  fairly  translated  parts 
of  it.) 

Enter  now  a  chorus  of  Oceanides,  and  these  continue 
throughout  the  play  to  perform  the  functions  of  exciting 
sympathy  for  the  Protagonist,  and  of  calling  upon  him 
for  information  when  it  becomes  necessary  that  the 
audience  should  know  this  and  that  fact  essential  to  the 
intelligibility  of  the  action. 

For  example,  after  the  Oceanides  have  alighted  from 
their  wind- borne  car,  and  have  condoled  with  the 
sufferer,  ^schylus  makes  them  the  medium  of  drawing 
from  Prometheus  the  recital  of  his  wrongs,  and  thus  of 
freshly  placing  that  whole  tremendous  story  before  the 
minds  of  his  audience. 

"  Speak  now," 

say  the  Chorus, 

"  And  let  us  know  the  whole  offence 
Jove  charges  thee  withal." 

And  Prometheus  relates : 

"  When  first  the  gods  their  fatal  strife  began, 
And  insurrection  raged  in  heaven,  some  striving 
To  cast  old  Kronos  from  his  hoary  throne 
That  Jove  might  reign,  and  others  to  crush  i*  the  bud 
His  swelling  mastery  —  I  wise  counsel  gave 
To  the  Titans,  sons  of  primal  Heaven  and  Earth ; 
But  gave  in  vain.       ..... 

Thus  baffled  in  my  plans,  I  deemed  it  best, 

As  things  then  were,  leagued  with  my  mother  Themis, 


84  The  English  Novel 

To  accept  Jove's  proffered  friendship.     By  my  counsels 

From  his  primeval  throne  was  Kronos  hurled 

Into  the  pit  Tartarean,  dark,  profound. 

With  all  his  troop  of  friends.  .  .  • 

"  Soon  as  he  sat  on  his  ancestral  throne 
He  called  the  gods  together,  and  assigned 
To  each  his  fair  allotment,  and  his  sphere 
Of  sway ;  but,  ah !  for  wretched  man ! 
To  him  no  portion  fell :  Jove  vowed 
To  blot  his  memory  from  the  Earth,  and  mould 
The  race  anew.     I  only  of  the  gods 
Thwarted  his  will ;  and,  but  for  my  strong  aid, 
Hades  had  whelmed,  and  hopeless  ruin  swamped 
All  men  that  breathe.     Such  were  my  crimes : 

**  And  here  I  lie,  in  cunning  torment  stretched, 
A  spectacle  inglorious  to  Jove." 

Presently  Ocean  appears,  and  advises  Prometheus  to 
yield.  Prometheus  scornfully  refuses,  and  Ocean,  fearful 
of  being  found  in  bad  company,  prudently  retires, 
whereupon,  after  a  mournful  hymn  from  the  Chorus, 
reciting  the  sympathy  of  all  nations  and  things  with 
Prometheus,  he  proceeds  to  relate  in  detail  his  ministry 
in  behalf  of  mankind.  The  account  which  he  gives  of 
the  primal  condition  of  the  human  race  is  very  instruc- 
tive upon  our  present  research,  as  embodying,  or  rather 
as  unconsciously  revealing,  the  complete  unconsciousness 
of  personality  —  of  what  we  call  personality  —  among 
^schylus  and  his  contemporaries. 

Prometheus  begins  by  calling  the  whole  human  race 
at  that  time  a  babe,  and  goes  on  to  declare  that 

"  Having  eyes  to  see,  they  saw  not, 
And  hearing,  heard  not,  but,  like  dreamy  phantoms, 
A  random  life  they  led  from  year  to  year. 
All  blindly  floundering  on.    No  craft  they  knew  *' 

(to  build) 


The  Development  of  Personality        85 

'*  But  in  the  dark  earth  burrowed. 
Numbers  too  I  taught  them       .  .  and  how 

To  fix  their  shifting  thoughts  by  marshalled  signs." 

He  brings  the  ox,  the  ass,  and  the  horse  into  service, 
launches  the  first  boat  on  the  sea,  teaches  medicine, 
institutes  divination,  and  finally 

"  I  probed  the  earth 
To  yield  its  hidden  wealth  .  .  • 

Iron,  copper,  silver,  gold ;  .  •  . 

And  thus,  with  one  short  word  to  sum  the  tale, 
Prometheus  taught  all  arts  to  mortal  men." 

CHORUS. 

"  Do  good  to  men,  but  do  it  with  discretion. 
Why  shouldst  thou  harm  thyself  ?    Good  hope  I  nurse 
To  see  thee  soon  from  these  harsh  chains  unbound, 
As  free,  as  mighty,  as  great  Jove  himself.** 

PROMETHEUS. 

"  This  may  not  be ;  the  destined  course  of  things 
Fate  must  accomplish. 
Though  art  be  strong,  necessity  is  stronger." 

CHORUS. 
"  And  who  is  lord  of  strong  necessity  ? " 

PROMETHEUS. 

"  The  triform  Fates  and  the  sure-memoried  Furies.'* 

CHORUS. 
"  And  mighty  Jove  himself  must  yield  to  them  ? " 

PROMETHEUS. 

"  No  more  than  others  Jove  can  'scape  his  doom." 

CHORUS. 
•  ••...•• 

"  There's  some  dread  mystery  in  thy  speech 
Close-veiled." 


86  The  English  Novel 

PROMETHEUS. 

"  The  truth  thou*lt  know 
In  fitting  season ;  now  it  lies  concealed 
In  deepest  darkness ;  for  relenting  Jove 
Himself  must  woo  this  secret  from  my  breast." 

(This  secret  —  so  it  is  told  in  the  old  myths  —  is  that 
Jove  is  to  meet  his  own  downfall  through  an  unfortunate 
marriage,  and  Prometheus  is  in  possession  of  the  details 
which  would  enable  Jove  to  avoid  the  doom.) 

After  a  choral  hymn,  recommending  submission  to 
Jove,  we  have  suddenly  the  grotesque  apparition  of  lo 
upon  the  stage.  lo  had  been  beloved  by  Jove,  but  the 
jealousy  of  Hera,  or  Juno,  had  transformed  her  into  a 
cow,  and  had  doomed  her  to  wander  over  the  world 
stung  by  an  inexpugnable  gadfly  and  watched  by  the 
hundred-eyed  Argus.  Thus  suddenly  upon  the  specta- 
cle of  a  man  suffering  from  the  hatred  of  Jove  ^schylus 
brings  the  spectacle  of  a  woman  suffering  from  the  love 
of  Jove.     lo  enters  with  this  fine  outburst : 

"  What  land  is  this  ?    What  race  of  mortals 
Owns  this  desert  ?    Who  art  thou. 
Rock-bound  with  these  wintry  fetters, 
And  for  what  crime  tortured  thus  ? 
Worn  and  weary  with  far  travel, 
Tell  me  where  my  feet  have  borne  me ! 
O  pain !  pain !  pain  !  it  stings  and  goads  me  again, 
The  fateful  gadfly !  —  save  me,  O  Earth !  —  avaunt 
Thou  horrible  shadow  of  the  earth-bom  Argus ! 
Could  not  the  grave  close  up  thy  hundred  eyes, 
But  thou  must  come, 

Haunting  my  path  with  thy  suspicious  look. 
Unhoused  from  Hades  ? 

Avaunt !  avaunt !  why  wilt  thou  hound  my  track, 
The  famished  wanderer  on  the  waste  sea-shore  ?  '* 

After  much  talk  lo  now  relates  her  mournful  story 
and,  supported  by  the  Chorus,  persuades  Prometheus  to 


The  Development  of  Personality        87 

prophesy  the  very  eventful  future  which  awaits  her  when 
her  wanderings  are  over.  In  this  prophetic  account  of 
her  travels  ^schylus  gives  a  soul-expanding  review  of 
land  after  land  according  to  the  geographic  and  ethnic 
notions  of  his  time ;  and  here  Mr.  Blackie,  whose  trans- 
lation of  the  Prometheus  I  have  been  partly  quoting 
from,  sometimes  reproduces  his  author  in  very  large  and 
musical  measures.     For  example,  Prometheus  chants  ; 

"  When  thou  hast  crossed  the  narrow  stream  that  parts 
The  continents,  to  the  far  flame-faced  East 
Thou  shalt  proceed,  the  highway  of  the  sun  ; 
Then  cross  the  sounding  ocean,  till  thou  reach 
Cisthene  and  the  Gorgon  plains,  where  dwell 
Phorcys*  three  daughters,  maids  with  frosty  eld, 
White  as  the  swan,  with  one  eye  and  one  tooth 
Shared  by  the  three  ;  them  Phoebus,  beamy-bright 
Beholds  not,  nor  the  nightly  moon.     Near  them 
Their  winged  sisters  dwell,  the  Gorgons  dire, 
Man-hating  monsters,  snaky-locked,  whom  eye 
Of  mortal  ne'er  might  look  upon  and  live. 

One  more  sight  remains 
That  fills  the  eye  with  horror. 
The  sharp-beaked  Griffins,  hounds  of  Jove,  avoid, 
Fell  dogs  that  bark  not ;  and  the  one-eyed  host 
Of  Arimaspian  horsemen  with  swift  hoofs 
Beating  the  banks  of  golden-rolling  Pluto. 
A  distant  land,  a  swarthy  people  next 
Receives  thee :  near  the  fountains  of  the  sun 
They  dwell  by  Ethiop's  wave.     This  river  trace 
Until  thy  weary  feet  shall  reach  the  pass 
Whence  from  the  Bybline  heights  the  sacred  Nile 
Pours  his  salubrious  flood.     The  winding  wave 
Thence  to  triangled  Egypt  guides  thee,  where 
A  distant  home  awaits  thee,  fated  mother 
Of  no  unstoried  race." 


In  this  strain  Prometheus  continues  to  foretell  the 
adventures  of  lo  until  her  son  Epaphus,   monarch   of 


8.8  The  English  Novel 

Egypt,  is  bora,  who  will  be  —  through  the  fifty  daughters 
celebrated  in  The  Suppliants  of  ^Eschylus  —  the  ancestor 
of  Hercules,  which  Hercules  is  to  be  the  deliverer  of 
Prometheus  himself. 

Then,  in  a  frenzy  of  pain,  lo  departs,  while  the  Chorus 
bursts  into  a  hymn  deploring  such  ill-matched  unions  as 
that  of  lo  with  Jove  and  extolling  marriage  between 
equals. 

After  the  exit  of  lo — to  finish  our  summary  of  the 
play —  the  action  hastens  to  the  end ;  the  Chorus  implores 
Prometheus  to  submit;  presently  Hermes  or  Mercury 
appears  and  tauntingly  counsels  surrender,  only  to  be 
as  tauntingly  repulsed  by  Prometheus ;  and,  after  a  sharp 
passage  of  wits  between  these  two,  accompanied  by  in- 
dignant outbursts  from  the  Chorus  at  the  pitilessness  of 
Hermes,  the  play  ceases  with  a  speech  from  Prometheus 
describing  the  new  punishment  of  Jove  ; 

"  Now  in  deed  and  not  in  discourse, 
The  firm  earth  quakes. 
Deep  and  loud  the  ambient  thunder 
Bellows,  and  the  flaring  lightning 
Wreathes  his  fiery  curls  around  me 
And  the  whirlwind  rolls  his  dust, 
And  the  winds  from  rival  regions 
Rush  in  elemental  strife, 
And  the  sky  is  destroyed  with  the  sea. 
Surely  now  the  tyrant  gathers 
All  his  hoarded  wrath  to  whelm  me. 
Mighty  Mother,  worshipped  Themis, 
Circling  ^Ether  that  diffusest 
Light,  the  common  joy  of  all, 
Thou  beholdest  these  my  wrongs ! " 

Thus  in  the  crash  of  elements  the  play  ends.  Fortu- 
nately our  purpose  with  this  huge  old  story  thus  treated 
by  iEschylus  lays  us  under  no  necessity  to  involve  our- 


The  Development  of  Personality        89 

selves  in  endless  discussions  of  Sun-myths,  of  the 
connection  between  ox- horned  lo  and  the  sacred  Egyp- 
tian cow  Isis,  of  moral  interpretations  which  vary  with 
every  standpoint.  The  extent  to  which  these  do  vary  is 
amusingly  illustrated  in  an  interpretation  of  the  true  sig- 
nificance of  Prometheus  which  I  recently  happened  to 
light  upon,  made  by  a  certain  Mr.  Newton  who  pub- 
lished an  elaborate  work  a  few  years  ago  in  defence  of 
the  strictly  vegetable  diet.  Mr.  Newton  would  not  have 
us  misapply  fire  to  cookery ;  and  in  this  line  of  thought 
he  interprets  the  old  fable  that  Prometheus  stole  fire  from 
heaven  and  was  punished  by  being  chained  to  Caucasus 
with  a  vulture  to  gnaw  his  liver.  The  simple  fact,  says 
our  vegetarian,  is  that  "  Prometheus  first  taught  the  use 
of  animal  food,  and  of  fire  with  which  to  render  it  more 
pleasing,  etc.,  to  the  taste.  Jupiter,  and  the  rest  of  the 
gods,  foreseeing  the  consequences  of  the  inventions" 
(these  consequences  being  all  manner  of  gastric  and  other 
diseases  which  Newton  attributes  to  the  use  of  animal 
food)  "were  amused  or  irritated  at  the  short-sighted 
devices  of  the  .  .  .  creature,  and  left  him  to  experience 
the  sad  effects  of  them."  In  short,  the  chaining  to  a  rock, 
with  a  vulture  to  gnaw  his  liver,  is  simply  a  very  satisfac- 
tory symbol  for  dyspepsia. 

Untroubled  by  these  entanglements,  which  thus  reach 
from  Max  Miiller  with  his  Sun- wanderings,  to  the  dys- 
peptic theory  of  our  vegetarian,  our  present  concern  is 
less  with  what  ^schylus  or  his  fable  meant  than  with 
the  frame  of  mind  of  the  average  man  who  sat  in  his 
audience  and  who  listened  to  these  matters  with  favor, 
who  accepted  this  picture  of  gods  and  men  without 
rebellion.  My  argument  is  that  if  this  average  man's 
sense  of  personality  had  not  been  most  feeble  he  could 
not  have  accepted  this  picture  at  all.     Permit  me  then 


go  The  English  Novel 

to  specify  three  or  four  of  the  larger  features  of  it  before 
we  go  on  to  contrast  the  treatment  of  this  fable  by 
iEschylus  with  that  by  Shelley  and  Taylor  in  a  later  age. 

In  the  first  place,  since  we  are  mainly  meditating 
upon  the  growth  of  human  personality,  I  beg  you  to 
observe  the  complete  lack  of  all  provision  for  such 
growth  either  among  the  gods  or  the  men  of  this  pres- 
entation. Consider  Hephaestus,  for  example,  or  Vulcan. 
Vulcan  may  hammer  away,  immortal  as  he  is,  for  a 
milHon  seons  upon  the  thunderbolts  of  Jove,  he  may 
fashion  and  forge  until  he  has  exhausted  the  whole 
science  and  art  of  offensive  and  defensive  armament; 
but  how  much  better  off  is  Vulcan  for  that?  he  can 
never  step  upon  a  higher  plane,  —  he  is  to  all  eternity 
simply  Vulcan,  armorer  to  Jove.  And  so  Hermes  or 
Mercury  may  carry  messages  eternally,  but  no  rhore ; 
his  faculty  and  apparatus  go  to  that  end  and  no  farther. 
But  these  limitations  are  intolerable  to  the  modern  per- 
sonality. The  very  conception  of  personality  seems  to 
me  to  imply  a  conception  of  growth.  If  I  do  one  thing 
to-day,  another  to-morrow,  I  am  twice  as  much  to-mor- 
row as  I  was  to-day,  by  virtue  of  the  new  thing;  or, 
even  if  I  do  only  the  same  thing  to-morrow  that  I  did 
to-day,  I  do  it  easier,  —  that  is,  with  a  less  expenditure 
of  force,  which  leaves  me  a  little  surplus;  and  by  as 
much  as  this  surplus  (which  I  can  apply  to  something 
else)  I  am  more  than  I  was  yesterday.  This  "  more  " 
represents  the  growth  which  I  said  was  implied  in  the 
very  conception  of  personality,  of  the  continuous 
individual. 

Now  the  feeling  of  all  this  appears  to  be  just  as  com- 
pletely asleep  in  ^schylus  himself  and  in  all  his  prece- 
dent old  Greek  theogonists  as  it  is  in  the  most  witless 
boor  who   gazes  open-mouthed    at  the  gigantic   Pro- 


The  Development  of  Personality       91 

metheus.  But  if  we  here  descend  from  the  gods,  to 
the  men,  of  this  picture,  we  find  Prometheus  almost  in 
terms  asserting  this  absence  of  personaHty  among  the 
men  whom  he  taught  which  we  have  just  found  by 
impUcation  among  the  gods  who  tortured  him. 

You  will  remember  the  lines  I  read  from  the  first  long 
speech  of  Prometheus  in  which  he  describes  the  utterly 
brutish,  crawling  cave-dwellers  to  whom  he  communi- 
cated the  first  idea  of  every  useful  art.  The  denial  of 
all  power  in  man  himself,  once  he  was  created,  of  orig- 
inating these  inventions  —  that  is,  of  growing  —  that  is, 
of  personality  —  is  complete. 

I  find  nothing  so  subtly  and  inconsolably  mournful 
among  all  the  explicit  miseries  of  the  Greek  mythology 
as  this  fixity  of  nature  in  the  god  or  the  man,  by 
which  the  being  is  suspended,  as  it  were,  at  a  certain 
point  of  growth,  there  to  hang  forever.  And  in  this 
view  the  whole  multitudinous  people,  divine  and  human, 
of  the  whole  Greek  cyclus,  seem  to  me  as  if  sculptured 
in  a  half  relief  upon  the  black  marble  wall  of  their  Fate 
—  in  half  relief  because  but  half  gods  and  half  men, 
who  in  the  lack  of  personality  cannot  grow,  cannot  move. 

When  Keats  stands  regarding  the  figures  sculptured 
upon  the  Grecian  urn,  it  is  only  a  cunning  sign  of  the 
unspeakable  misery  of  his  own  life  that  he  finds  the 
youth  happy  because  though  he  can  never  succeed  in 
his  chase  he  can  never  fall  any  farther  behind  in  it ;  to 
Keats's  teased  aspiration  a  certain  sense  of  rest  comes 
out  of  the  very  fixity  of  a  man  suspended  in  marble. 

"  Fair  youth  beneath  the  trees,  thou  canst  not  leave 
Thy  song,  nor  ever  can  those  trees  be  bare ; 
Bold  lover,  never,  never  canst  thou  kiss 
Though  winning  near  the  goal  !    Yet  do  not  grieve : 
She  cannot  fade  though  thou  hast  not  thy  bliss. 
Forever  wilt  thou  love  and  she  be  fair." 


92  The  English  Novel 

A  true  old  Greek  despair  fills  these  lines  with  a  sorrow 
which  is  all  the  more  penetrating  when  we  hear  it  sing- 
ing out  from  among  the  keen  and  energetic  personalities 
of  modern  times,  —  personalities  which  will  not  accept 
any  youth's  happiness  of  being  howsoever  near  to  his  love 
if  that  happiness  be  coupled  with  the  condition  that  he  is 
never  to  be  nearer,  —  personalities  which  find  their  whole 
summary  in  continuous  growth,  increase,  movement. 

And  the  case  grows  all  the  stronger  if  we  consider  that 
the  Golden  Age,  (when  the  condition  of  primal  man  is 
very  far  from  the  miserable  state  depicted  by  Prome- 
theus,) in  which  the  antique  imagination  took  such  great 
delight,  not  all  unshared,  it  must  be  confessed,  by  later 
times,  fails  to  please  the  modern  personality. 

How  taking  seems  this  simplicity : 

"  A  blisful  lyfe,  a  peseable  and  so  swete, 
Leddyn  the  peplis  in  the  former  age ; 
Thei  helde  them  paied  with  the  frutes  they  etc, 
Wich  that  the  feldes  gafe  them  by  usage ; 

"  Thei  etyn  most  hawys  and  such  pownage 
And  dronken  watyr  of  the  colde  welle. 

**  Yet  was  the  ground  not  woundyd  with  the  plough, 
But  corne  upsprange  onsowe  of  mannes  hand  ; 

**  No  man  yit  knew  the  furous  of  hys  land  ; 
No  man  yit  fier  owt  of  the  flynt  fand. 

"  No  flesche  ne  wyst  offence  of  hegge  or  spere ; 
No  coyne  ne  knew  man  whiche  was  false  or  trewe ; 
No  shyppe  yit  karfe  the  wawys  grene  and  blewe ; 
No  marchand  yit  ne  fet  owtlandische  ware. 

"  Yit  were  no  palys  chambris,  ne  no  hallys ; 
In  cavys  and  in  wodes  soft  and  swete 
Sleptyn  thys  blessyd  folk  withowte  wallys 
On  grasse  or  Icvys  in  parfite  joy  and  quiete. 


The  Development  of  Personality       ^^ 

"  Unforgyd  was  the  hauberke  and  the  plate ; 
The  lambisshe  pepyl,  voyd  of  alle  vice, 
Hadden  noo  fantasye  to  debate, 
But  eche  of  hem  wold  oder  well  cheriche ; 
No  pride,  none  envy,  none  avarice, 
No  lord,  no  taylage  by  no  tyrannye, 
Humble^se,  and  pease,  good  fayth  the  emprise. 

*  Yit  was  hot  Jupiter  the  likerous, 
That  first  was  fadyr  of  delicacye 
Come  in  thys  world,  ne  Nembroth  desirous 
To  raygne  hadde  not  made  hys  towrys  hyghe. 
Alas !  alas  !  now  may  men  wepe  and  crye, 
For  in  owre  days  is  not  but  covetyse, 
Doublenesse,  treson,  and  envye, 
Poysonne,  manslawtyr,  mordre  in  sondri  wyse." 

Surety  this  is  all  soothing  and  enchanting  enough; 
one  cannot  escape  the  amiable  complacencies  which 
breathe  out  from  this  placid  scene ;  but  what  modem 
man  would  soberly  agree  to  exchange  a  single  moment 
of  this  keen,  breezy,  energetic,  growing  existence  of  ours 
for  a  Methuselah's  life  in  this  golden  land  where  nature 
does  not  offer  enough  resistance  to  educe  manhood  or 
to  furnish  material  for  art,  and  where  there  is  absolutely 
no  room,  no  chance,  no  need,  no  conception  of  this  per- 
sonality that  if  rightly  felt  makes  the  humblest  life  one 
long  enchantment  of  the  possible.  The  modern  per- 
sonality confronted  with  these  pictures,  after  the  first 
glamour  is  gone,  is  much  minded  to  say  with  the  sharp- 
witted  Glaucon  in  Plato's  Republic,  according  to  Jowett : 
"  after  all,  a  state  of  simplicity  is  a  city  of  pigs." 

But  secondly,  the  cumbrous  apparatus  of  power  with 
which  ^schylus  presents  us  in  this  play  is  a  conception 
of  people  not  acquainted  with  that  model  of  infinite 
compactness  which  every  man  finds  in  his  own  ego, 
Jove,  instead  of  speaking  a  word  and  instantly  seeing 


94  The  English  Novel 

the  deed  result,  must  rely  first  upon  his  two  ministers, 
]\Iight  and  Force,  who  in  the  first  scene  of  our  play 
have  hauled  in  the  Titan  Prometheus ;  these,  however, 
do  not  suffice,  but  Hephaestus  must  be  summoned  in 
order  to  nail  him  to  the  rocks;  and  Jove  cannot  even 
leam  whether  or  not  his  prisoner  is  repentant  until 
Hermes,  the  messenger,  visits  Prometheus  and  returns. 
The  modem  ego  which,  though  one  indivisible,  impalpa- 
ble unit,  yet  remembers,  reasons,  imagines,  loves,  hates, 
fears  and  does  a  thousand  more  things  all  within  its  little 
scope,  without  appliances  or  external  apparatus  —  such 
an  ego  regards  such  a  Jove  much  in  the  light  of  that  old 
Spanish  monarch  in  whose  court  various  duties  were  so 
minutely  distributed  and  punctiliously  discharged,  that 
upon  a  certain  occasion  (as  is  related),  the  monarch  being 
seated  too  near  the  fire  and  the  proper  functionary  for 
removing  him  being  out  of  call,  his  majesty  was  roasted 
to  death  in  the  presence  of  the  entire  royal  household. 

And  as  the  third  feature  of  the  unpersonality  revealed 
in  this  play,  consider  the  fact  that  it  is  impossible  for  the 
modern  reader  to  find  himself  at  all  properly  terror- 
stricken  by  the  purely  physical  paraphernalia  of  thunder, 
of  storms,  of  chains,  of  sharp  bolts,  and  the  like,  which 
constitute  the  whole  resources  of  Jove  for  the  punish- 
ment of  Prometheus. 

The  modern  direct  way  of  looking  at  things  —  the  per- 
fectly natural  outcome  of  the  habit  of  every  man's  dealing 
with  a  thing  for  himself  and  of  first  necessarily  looking 
to  see  what  the  thing  actually  is  —  this  directness  of 
vision  cannot  help  seeing  that  Prometheus  is  a  god,  that 
he  is  immortal,  that  thunder  cannot  kill  him,  that  the 
bolt  through  his  breast  makes  no  wound  but  will  repair 
itself  with  ease,  that  he  not  only  knows  all  this,  but 
knows  further  that  it  is  to  end  (as  Prometheus  himself 


The  Development  of  Personality       95 

declares  in  the  play)  in  his  own  triumph.  Under  these 
circumstances  the  whole  array  of  whirlwinds  and  light- 
nings becomes  a  mere  pin-scratch ;  the  whole  business  is 
a  matter  of  that  purely  physical  pain  which  every  man 
is  ashamed  to  make  a  noise  of.  We  can  conceive  a 
mere  man  fronting  all  these  terrors  of  storm  and  thunder 
with  unbowed  head  and  serene  countenance,  in  the  con- 
sciousness that  the  whitest  of  these  lightnings  cannot 
singe  an  eyelash  of  his  immortal  personality ;  how,  then, 
can  it  be  expected  that  we  shall  be  greatly  impressed  with 
the  endurance  of  these  ills  by  a  god  to  whose  greater 
resistive  endowment  the  whole  system  of  this  gross  thrust- 
and-smite  of  iron  and  fire  is  no  more  than  the  momentary 
tease  of  a  gnat !  To  the  audience  of  ^schylus,  not 
so ;  they  shiver  and  groan ;  they  know  not  themselves. 

I  do  not  know  how  I  can  better  show  the  grossness  of 
this  conception  of  pain  than  by  opposing  to  it  a  subtle 
modem  conception  thereof  whose  contrast  will  fairly 
open  out  before  us  the  truly  prodigious  gulf  between 
the  average  personality  of  the  time  of  -^schylus  and 
that  of  ourselves.  The  modem  conception  I  refer  to  is 
Keats's  Ode  on  Melancholy;  which,  indeed,  if  one  may 
say  a  word  obiter,  out  of  the  fullness  of  one's  heart  —  I 
am  often  inclined  to  think  for  all-in-all,  —  that  is,  for 
thoughts  most  mortally  compacted,  for  words  which 
come  forth,  each  trembling  and  giving  off  light  like  a 
morning- star,  and  for  the  pure  beauty  of  the  spirit  and 
strength  and  height  of  the  spirit,  —  which,  I  say,  for 
all-in-all,  I  am  often  inclined  to  think,  reaches  the  highest 
height  yet  touched  in  the  lyric  line. 

"  No,  no,  go  not  to  Lethe,  neither  twist 

Wolf's-bane,  tight-rooted,  for  its  poisonous  wine; 
Nor  suffer  thy  pale  forehead  to  be  kiss*d 
By  night-shade,  ruby  grape  of  Proserpine; 


g6  The  English  Novel 

Make  not  your  rosary  of  yew-berries, 
Nor  let  the  beetle,  nor  the  death-moth  be 
Your  mournful  Psyche,  nor  the  downy  owl 

A  partner  in  your  sorrow's  mysteries ; 

For  shade  to  shade  will  come  too  drowsily. 
And  drown  the  wakeful  anguish  of  the  soul. 

"  But  when  the  melancholy  fit  shall  fall 

Sudden  from  heaven  like  a  weeping  cloud, 

That  fosters  the  droop-headed  flowers  all, 
And  hides  the  green  hill  in  an  April  shroud, 

Then  glut  thy  sorrow  on  a  morning  rose. 
Or  on  the  rainbow  of  the  salt-sand  wave, 
Or  on  the  wealth  of  globed  peonies ; 

Or  if  thy  mistress  some  rich  anger  shows, 
Imprison  her  soft  hand,  and  let  her  rave. 
And  feed  deep,  deep  upon  her  peerless  eyes. 

**  She  dwells  with  Beauty  —  Beauty  that  must  die; 

And  Joy,  whose  hand  is  ever  at  his  lips 
Bidding  adieu ;  and  aching  Pleasure  nigh, 

Turning  to  poison  while  the  bee-moth  sips : 
Ay,  in  the  very  temple  of  Delight 

Veiled  Melancholy  has  her  sovran  shrine, 
Though  seen  of  none  save  him  whose  strenuous  tongue 

Can  burst  Joy's  grape  against  his  palate  fine ; 
His  soul  shall  taste  the  sadness  of  her  might. 

And  be  among  her  cloudy  trophies  hung." 


The  Development  of  Personality       97 


The  main  direction  of  our  studies  has  been  indicated 
in  the  preceding  lectures  to  such  an  extent  that  from 
this  point  forward  our  customary  review  may  be  omitted. 
In  examining  the  Prometheus  of  ^schylus  we  have  found 
three  particulars  in  which  not  only  i^schylus  but  his 
entire  contemporary  time  shows  complete  unconscious- 
ness of  the  most  precious  and  essential  belongings  of 
personality.  These  particulars  were,  (i)  the  absolute 
impossibility  of  growth,  implicitly  affirmed  of  the  gods 
and  explicitly  affirmed  of  men  in  the  passages  which 
were  read;  (2)  the  awkwardness  of  Jove's  apparatus  of 
power — which  included  a  minister  for  every  kind  of  act  — 
as  contrasted  with  the  elasticity  and  much-in-little  which 
each  man  must  perceive  in  regarding  the  action  of  his 
own  mind;  and  (3)  the  gross  and  purely  physical  char- 
acter of  the  punishments  used  by  Jove  to  break  the 
spirit  of  Prometheus.  It  was  contended,  you  remember, 
that  if  the  audience  of  ^schylus  had  acquired  that 
direct  way  of  looking  phenomena  in  the  face  which  is 
one  of  the  incidents  of  our  modern  personality  they 
would  have  perceived  such  an  inadequacy  between  the 
thunders  and  earthquakes  of  Jove,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
the  immortal  spirit  of  a  Titan  and  a  god  like  Prome- 
theus, on  the  other,  that  the  play,  instead  of  being  a 
religious  and  impressive  spectacle  to  them,  as  it  doubt- 
less was,  would  have  been  simply  a  matter  of  ridicule, 
or  at  best  one  of  those  mere  dilettante  entertainments 

7 


98  The  English  Novel 

where  of  our  own  free  will  we  forgive  the  grossest 
violations  of  common  sense  and  propriety  for  the  sake 
of  the  music  or  the  scenery  with  which  they  are  asso- 
ciated, as  for  example  at  the  Italian  opera,  or  the  Christ- 
mas pantomime. 

This  last  particular  brings  us  directly  upon  Shelley's 
play  of  the  Prometheus  Unbound,  We  have  seen  that 
^schylus  had  a  fit  audience  for  this  fable  and  was  work- 
ing upon  emotions  which  are  as  deep  as  religion ;  but 
now,  when  we  come  down  2300  years  to  a  time  from 
which  the  ^Eschylean  religious  beliefs  have  long  exhaled, 
and  when  the  enormous  growth  of  personality  has  quite 
rolled  away  the  old  lumpish  terror  that  stood  before  the 
cave  of  the  physical  and  darkened  it :  in  such  a  time 
it  would,  of  course,  be  truly  amazing  if  a  man  like 
Shelley  should  have  elaborated  this  same  old  Prome- 
thean fable  into  a  lyrical  drama  in  the  expectation  of 
shaking  the  souls  of  men  with  this  same  old  machinery 
of  thunder,  whirlwind  and  earthquake. 

Such  a  mistake  —  the  mistake  of  tearing  the  old  fable 
forcibly  away  from  its  old  surroundings  and  of  setting 
it  in  modern  thoughts  before  modern  men  —  would  be 
much  the  same  with  that  which  Emerson  has  noted  in 
his  poem  Each  and  All: 

**  I  thought  the  sparrow's  note  from  heaven. 
Singing  at  dawn  on  the  alder  bough ; 
I  brought  him  home  in  his  nest  at  even ; 
He  sings  the  song,  but  it  pleases  not  now, 
For  I  did  not  bring  home  the  river  and  sky  — 
He  sang  to  my  ear,  they  sang  to  my  eye. 
The  delicate  shells  lay  on  the  shore  ; 
Bubbles  of  the  latest  wave 
Fresh  pearls  to  their  enamel  gave ; 
And  the  bellowing  of  the  savage  sea 
Qreeted  their  safe  escape  to  me. 


The  Development  of  Personality       99 

I  wiped  away  the  weeds  and  foam 

I  fetched  my  sea-born  treasures  home ; 

But  the  poor,  unsightly,  noisome  things 

Had  left  their  beauty  on  the  shore 

With  the  sun  and  the  sand  and  the  wild  sea-shore." 

Accordingly,  it  is  instructive,  as  we  look  into  Shelley's 
work,  to  observe  how  this  inability  of  his  to  bring  home 
the  river  and  the  sky  along  with  the  sparrow  —  this 
inability  to  bring  a  Greek-hearted  audience  to  listen 
to  his  Greek  fable  —  operates  to  infuse  a  certain  tang  of 
insincerity,  of  dilettantism,  whenever  he  attempts  to  re- 
produce upon  us  the  old  terrors  of  thunder  and  lightning 
which  iEschylus  found  so  effective.  We  —  we  modems 
—  cannot  for  our  lives  help  seeing  the  man  in  his  shirt- 
sleeves who  is  turning  the  crank  of  the  thunder-mill 
behind  the  scenes ;  nay,  we  are  inclined  to  ask  with  a 
certain  proud  indignation.  How  is  it  that  you  wish  us  to 
tremble  at  this  mere  resinous  lightning,  when  we  have 
seen  a  man  (not  a  Titan  nor  a  god) ,  one  of  ourselves,  go 
forth  into  a  thunder-storm  and  send  his  kite  up  into  the 
very  bosom  thereof  and  fairly  entice  the  lightning  by 
his  wit  to  come  and  perch  upon  his  finger,  and  be  the 
tame  bird  of  him  and  his  fellows  thereafter  and  forever? 
But  secondly,  it  is  still  more  conclusive  upon  our  present 
point,  of  the  different  demands  made  by  the  personality 
of  our  time  from  that  of  .^schylus,  to  observe  how 
Shelley's  own  sense  of  this  difference,  his  own  modern 
instinct,  has  led  him  to  make  most  material  alterations 
of  the  old  fable,  not  only  by  increasing  the  old  list  of 
physical  torments  with  a  number  that  are  purely  spiritual 
and  modern,  but  also  by  dignifying  at  once  the  character 
of  Prometheus  and  the  catastrophe  of  the  play  with 
that  enormous  motive  of  forgiveness  which  seems  to  be 
the  largest  outcome  of  the  developed  personality.    Many 


I  CXI  The  English  Novel 

of  you  are  aware  of  the  scholastic  belief  that  the 
Prometheus  Bound  of  ^schylus  was  but  the  middle  play 
of  a  trilogy,  and  that  the  last  showed  us  a  compromise 
effected  between  Prometheus  and  Jove  according  to 
which  Prometheus  reveals  the  fatal  secret  concerning 
Jove's  marriage,  and  Jove  makes  a  new  league  of  amity 
with  the  Titan.  We  have  a  note  of  this  change  in 
treatment  in  the  very  opening  lines  of  Shelley's  play  — 
which  I  now  beg  to  set  before  you  in  the  briefest  possible 
sketch.  Scene  I  of  Act  I  opens  —  according  to  the  stage 
direction  —  upon  A  ravine  of  icy  rocks  in  the  Indian 
Caucasus :  Prometheus  is  discovered  bound  to  the  precipice : 
Panthea  and  lone  are  seated  at  his  feet :  timcy  night: 
during  the  scene^  morning  slowly  breaks.  Prometheus 
begins  to  speak  at  once.  I  read  only  here  and  there  a 
line  selected  with  special  reference  to  showing  the  change 
of  treatment  I  have  indicated  as  due  to  that  intenser 
instinct  of  personality  which  Shelley  shared  in  common 
with  his  contemporaries  over  ^schylus  and  his  contem- 
poraries. 

Prometheus  exclaims  : 

"  Monarch  of  gods  and  demons,  and  all  spirits 
But  one,  who  throng  those  bright  and  rolling  worlds 
Which  thou  and  I  alone  of  living  things 
Behold  with  sleepless  eyes  !  .  .  . 

Three  thousand  years  of  sleep-unsheltered  hours, 
And  moments  aye  divided  by  keen  pangs 
Till  they  seemed  years,  torture  and  solitude, 
Scorn  and  despair,  —  these  are  mine  empire. 
More  glorious  far  than  that  which  thou  surveyest 
From  thine  unenvied  throne  1 " 

Here  we  have  the  purely  spiritual  torments  of  "  soli- 
tude, scorn  and  despair  "  set  before  us :  though  Shelley 
retains  and   even  multiplies  the   physical   torments   of 


The  Development  of  Personality      loi 

-^schylus.  A  few  lines  further  on,  in  this  same  long 
opening  speech  of  Prometheus,  we  have  them  thus 
described : 

"  Nailed  to  this  wall  of  eagle-baffling  mountain, 
Black,  wintry,  dead,  unmeasured  ;  without  herb. 
Insect,  or  beast,  or  shape  or  sound  of  life. 

The  crawling  glaciers  pierce  me  with  the  spears 
Of  their  moon-freezing  crystals ;  the  bright  chains 
Eat  with  their  burning  cold  into  my  bones. 

The  earthquake  fiends  are  charged 
To  wrench  the  rivets  from  my  quivering  wounds 
When  the  rocks  split  and  close  again  behind ; 
While  from  their  wild  abysses  howling  throng 
The  genii  of  the  storm,  urging  the  rage 
Of  whirlwind,  and  afflict  me  with  keen  hail." 

And  presently,  when  after  the  repulse  of  Mercury  Jove 
begins  to  stir  up  new  terrors,  we  hear  lone  exclaiming : 

"  O,  sister,  look  !  white  fire 
Has  cloven  to  the  roots  yon  huge  snow-loaded  cedar ; 
How  fearfully  God's  thunder  howls  behind  !  " 

But  even  in  Shelley's  array  of  these  terrors  we  perceive 
a  cunning  outcrop  of  modernness  in  a  direction  which  I 
have  not  yet  mentioned  but  which  we  shall  have  frequent 
occasion  to  notice  when  we  come  to  read  the  modem 
novel  together :  and  that  is  in  the  detail  of  the  description, 
^schylus  paints  these  conclusions  with  a  big  brush, 
and  three  sweeps  of  it :  Shelley  itemizes  them. 

It  is  worth  while  observing,  too,  that  the  same  spirit 
of  detail  in  modem  criticism  forces  us  to  convict  Shelley 
here  of  an  inconsistency  in  his  scene  :  for  how  could  this 
"  snow-loaded  cedar  "  of  lone  exist  with  propriety  in  a 
scene  which  Prometheus  himself  has  just  described  as 
"  without  herb,  insect,  or  beast,  or  sound  of  life  ?  " 


I02  The  English  Novel 

The  same  instinct  of  modemness  both  in  the  spiritual- 
ity of  the  torment  and  in  the  minuteness  of  its  descrip- 
tion displays  itself  a  little  farther  on  in  the  curse  of 
Prometheus.  Prometheus  tells  us  in  this  same  opening 
speech  that  long  ago  he  uttered  a  certain  awful  curse 
against  Jove  which  he  now  desires  to  recall;  but  it 
would  seem  that  in  order  to  recall  it  he  wishes  to  hear 
the  exact  words  of  it.  "What  was  that  curse?"  —  he 
exclaims  at  the  end  of  the  speech ;  "  for  ye  all  heard  me 
speak."  To  this  question  we  have  page  after  page  of 
replies  from  five  voices  —  namely,  the  Voice  of  the  Moun- 
tains, of  the  Springs,  of  the  Air,  of  the  Whirlwinds  and 
of  the  Earth  —  embodying  such  a  mass  of  falsetto  sub- 
limity that  Shelley  himself  would  surely  have  drawn  his 
pen  through  the  whole  if  he  had  lived  into  the  term  of 
manhood.  Finally  the  whole  awkward  device  for  getting 
the  curse  of  Prometheus  before  the  reader  is  consum- 
mated by  raising  up  the  phantasm  of  Jupiter  wHich 
repeats  the  curse,  word  for  word.  We  have  page  after 
page  of  talk  before  this  first  act  is  finished  ;  and  for  our 
present  purpose  it  may  be  dismissed  with  the  single 
remark  that  the  very  wordiness  of  it,  the  detail,  the 
diffuseness,  —  which  ramble  all  over  the  heavens  and  the 
earth,  and  search  the  very  depths  of  the  spirit,  for 
similes,  until  the  reader's  mind  is  brought  to  a  condition 
like  that  when  one  repeats  a  word  over  and  over  until 
the  word  loses  all  meaning,  —  all  this,  I  say,  may  be  dis- 
missed with  the  single  remark  that  the  enormity  of  it  is 
itself  an  incident  of  the  very  personality  we  have  seen 
cropping  out  in  so  many  other  directions.  I  think  I 
know  not  a  single  English  poet  —  not  even  among  the 
Elizabethans,  whose  besetting  sin  is  wordiness — who  sins 
so  prodigiously  in  this  respect.  In  truth,  Shelley  appears 
always  to  have  labored  under  an  essential  immaturity: 


The  Development  of  Personality     103 

it  is  very  possible  that  if  he  had  lived  a  hundred  years 
he  would  never  have  become  a  man :  he  was  penetrated 
with  modem  ideas,  but  penetrated  as  a  boy  would  be, 
crudely,  overmuch,  and  with  a  constant  tendency  to  the 
extravagant  and  illogical ;  so  that  I  call  him  the  modern 
boy. 

These  considerations  quite  cover  the  remaining  three 
acts  of  his  Prometheus  Unbound  and  render  it  unneces- 
sary for  me  to  quote  from  them  in  support  of  the  passages 
already  cited. 

The  first  act  contains,  indeed,  nearly  the  substance  of 
the  whole  drama.  Act  II  contains  no  important  motive 
except  the  visit  of  Asia  and  Panthea  to  Demogorgon 
under  the  earth.  In  the  third  act  we  have  a  view  of  Jove 
surrounded  by  his  ministers ;  but  in  the  midst  of  a  short 
speech  to  them  he  is  suddenly  swept  into  hell  for  ever- 
lasting punishment.  Here,  of  course,  Shelley  makes  a 
complete  departure  from  the  old  story  of  the  compromise 
between  Jove  and  Prometheus;  Shelley  makes  Prome- 
theus scornfully  reject  such  a  compromise  and  allow  Jove 
to  go  down  to  his  doom.  Hercules  then  unbinds  Pro- 
metheus who  repairs  to  a  certain  exquisite  interlunar 
cave  and  there  dwells  in  tranquillity  with  his  beloved  Asia. 
The  rest  of  Act  III  is  filled  with  long  descriptions  of 
the  change  which  comes  upon  the  world  with  the  de- 
thronement of  Jove.  Act  IV  is  the  most  amazing  piece 
of  surplusage  in  literature;  the  catastrophe  has  been 
reached  long  ago  in  the  third  act,  Jove  is  in  eternal 
duress,  Prometheus  has  been  liberated  and  has  gone  with 
Asia  and  Panthea  to  his  eternal  paradise  above  the  earth, 
and  a  final  radiant  picture  of  the  reawakening  of  man 
and  nature  under  the  new  regime  has  closed  up  the  whole 
with  the  effect  of  a  transformation-scene.  Yet,  upon 
all  this,  Shelley  drags  in  Act  IV  which  is  simply  leaden 


I04  The  English  Novel 

in  action  and  color  alongside  of  Act  III  and  in  which 
the  voices  of  unseen  spirits,  the  chorus  of  Hours,  lone, 
Panthea,  Demogorgon,  the  Earth  and  the  Moon  pelt  each 
other  with  endless  sweetish  speeches  that  rain  like  ineffec- 
tual comfits  in  a  carnival  of  silliness.  For  example,  a 
Voice  of  Unseen  Spirits  cries  : 

"  Bright  clouds  float  in  heaven, 
Dew-stars  gleam  on  earth, 
Waves  assemble  on  ocean, 
They  are  gathered  and  driven 
By  the  storm  of  delight,  by  the  panic  of  glee ! 
They  shake  with  emotion. 
They  dance  in  their  mirth. 
But  where  are  ye  ? 

*'  The  pine  boughs  are  singing 
Old  songs  with  new  gladness ; 
The  billows  and  fountains 
Fresh  music  are  flinging 

Like  the  notes  of  a  spirit  from  land  and  from  sea; 
The  storms  mock  the  mountains 
With  the  thunder  of  gladness. 
But  where  are  ye  ?  " 

The  people  thus  inquired  for,  being  the  chorus  of 
Hours,  sleepily  reply ; 

"  The  voice  of  the  spirits  of  air  and  of  earth 
Has  drawn  back  the  figured  curtain  of  sleep 
Which  covered  our  being  and  darkened  our  birth 
In  the  deep." 

A  VOICE. 

"In  the  deep?" 

SEMI-CHORUS. 
••Oh,  below  the  deep.** 

SEMI-CHORUS  I. 

"  We  have  heard  the  lute  of  Hope  in  sleep; 
We  have  known  the  voice  of  love  in  dreams, 
We  have  felt  the  wand  of  power  come  and  leap—* 


The  Development  of  Personality      105 

SEMI-CHORUS   II. 
**  As  the  billows  leap  in  the  morning  beams," 

CHORUS. 

"  Weave  the  dance  on  the  floor  of  the  breeze. 
Pierce  with  song  heaven's  silent  light, 
Enchant  the  day  that  too  swiftly  flees, 
To  check  its  flight  ere  the  cave  of  night. 

"  Once  the  hungry  Hours  were  hounds 
Which  chased  the  day  like  a  bleeding  deer. 
And  it  limped  and  stumbled  with  many  wounds 
Through  the  nightly  dells  of  the  desert  year. 

"But  now  oh !  weave  the  mystic  measure 
Of  music,  and  dance,  and  shapes  of  light ; 
Let  the  Hours  and  the  spirits  of  night  and  pleasure 
Like  the  clouds  and  sunbeams  unite." 

CHORUS   OF  SPIRITS. 
"  We  join  the  throng 
Of  the  dance  and  the  song, 
By  the  whirlwind  of  gladness  borne  along; 
As  the  flying-fish  leap 
From  the  Indian  deep 
And  mix  with  the  sea-birds  half  asleep." 

This  long  lyric  outburst,  wholly  unnecessary  to  an 
action  which  was  already  complete,  seems  an  instructive 
fact  to  place  before  young  writers  in  a  time  when  many 
souls  which  might  be  poetic  gardens  if  they  would 
compact  all  their  energies  into  growing  two  roses  and  a 
lily — three  poems  in  all,  for  a  lifetime — become  instead 
mere  wastes  of  profuse  weeds  that  grow  and  are  cut  down 
and  cast  into  the  oven  with  each  monthly  magazine. 

But  it  would  not  be  fair  to  leave  Shelley  with  this  flat 
taste  in  our  mouths,  and  I  will  therefore  beg  to  finish 
our  examination  of  the  Prometheus  Unbound  by  three 
quotations  from  these  last  acts,  in  which  his  modemnesfi 


io6  The  English  Novel 

of  detail  and  of  subtlety, —  being  exercised  upon  matters 
capable  of  such  treatment  —  has  made  for  us  some 
strong  and  beautiful  poetry.  Here  for  instance  at  the 
opening  of  Scene  I,  Act  II,  we  have  a  charming  specimen 
of  the  modem  poetic  treatment  of  nature  and  of  land- 
scape, full  of  spirituality  and  full  of  detail.  The  stage 
direction  is  Morning;  A  Lovely  Vale  in  the  Indian 
Caucasus,  Asia^  alone,  Asia,  who  is  the  lovely  bride 
of  Prometheus,  is  awaiting  Panthea  who  is  to  come  with 
news  of  him.  She  begins  with  an  invocation  of  the 
Spring. 

ASIA. 

"  From  all  the  blasts  of  heaven  thou  hast  descended : 
Yes :  like  a  spirit,  like  a  thought,  which  makes 
Unwonted  tears  throng  to  the  horny  eyes, 
And  beatings  haunt  the  desolated  heart, 
Which  should  have  learnt  repose  :  thou  hast  descended 
Cradled  in  tempests  ;  thou  dost  wake,  O  Spring ! 
O  child  of  many  winds !     As  suddenly 
Thou  comest  as  the  memory  of  a  dream, 
Which  now  is  sad  because  it  hath  been  sweet ! 
Like  genius,  or  like  joy  which  riseth  up 
As  from  the  earth,  clothing  with  golden  clouds 
The  desert  of  our  life. 
This  is  the  season,  this  the  day,  the  hour ; 
At  sunrise  thou  shouldst  come,  sweet  sister  mine, 
Too  long  desired,  too  long  delaying,  come  ! 
How  like  death-worms  the  wingless  moments  crawl  I 
The  point  of  one  white  star  is  quivering  still 
Deep  in  the  orange  light  of  widening  morn 
Beyond  the  purple  mountains  :  through  a  chasm 
Of  wind-divided  mist  the  darker  lake 
Reflects  it :  now  it  wanes :  it  gleams  again 
As  the  waves  fade,  and  as  the  burning  threads 
Of  woven  cloud  unravel  the  pale  air  ; 
'Tis  lost !  and  through  yon  peaks  of  cloud-like  snow 
The  roseate  sunlight  quivers  :  hear  I  not 
The  yEolian  music  of  her  sea-green  plumes 
Winnowing  the  crimson  dawn  ?  " 


The  Development  of  Personality      107 

And  here  we  find  some  limpid  details  of  underwater 
life  which  are  modern.  Two  fauns  are  conversing  :  one 
inquires  where  live  certain  delicate  spirits  whom  they 
hear  talking  about  the  woods,  but  never  meet.  We  are 
here  in  an  atmosphere  very  much  like  that  of  the 
Midsummer- Nigh f  s  Dream,  I  scarcely  know  anything 
more  compact  of  pellucid  beauty  :  it  seems  quite  worthy 
of  Shakspere. 

SECOND   FAUN. 

« 'Tis  hard  to  tell : 
I  have  heard  those  more  skill'd  in  spirits  say, 
The  bubbles,  which  th*  enchantment  of  the  sun 
Sucks  from  the  pale  faint  water-flowers  that  pave 
The  oozy  bottom  of  clear  lakes  and  pools, 
Are  the  pavilions  where  such  dwell  and  float 
Under  the  green  and  golden^tmosphere 
"Which  noontide  kindles  through  the  woven  leaves; 
And  when  these  burst,  and  the  thin  fiery  air. 
The  which  they  breathed  within  those  lucent  domes. 
Ascends  to  flow  like  meteors  through  the  night. 
They  ride  on  them,  and  rein  their  headlong  speed, 
And  bow  their  burning  crests,  and  glide  in  fire 
Under  the  waters  of  the  earth  again." 

Here  again,  in  my  third  extract,  we  have  poetry  which 
is  as  strong  as  the  other  is  dainty,  and  which  is  as 
modern  as  geology.  Asia  is  describing  a  vision  in  which 
the  successive  deposits  in  the  crust  of  the  earth  are 
revealed  to  her.  The  whole  treatment  is  detailed, 
modern,  vivid,  powerful. 

"  The  beams  flash  on 
And  make  appear  the  melancholy  ruins 
Of  cancell'd  cycles  :  anchors,  beaks  of  ships  ; 
Planks  turn'd  to  marble  ;  quivers,  helms,  and  spears, 
And  gorgon-headed  targes,  and  the  wheels 
Of  scythed  chariots,  and  the  emblazonry 
Of  trophies,  standards,  and  armorial  beasts, 


io8  The  English  Novel 

Round  which  death  laugh'd,  sepulchred  emblems 
Of  dread  destruction,  ruin  within  ruin  ! 
The  wrecks  beside  of  many  a  city  vast, 
Whose  population  which  the  earth  grew  over 
Was  mortal,  but  not  human  ;  see,  they  lie. 
Their  monstrous  works  and  uncouth  skeletons, 
Their  statues,  domes,  and  fanes,  prodigious  shapes 
Huddled  in  gray  annihilation,  split, 
Jamm'd  in  the  hard,  black  deep ;  and  over  these 
The  anatomies  of  unknown  winged  things. 
And  fishes  which  were  isles  of  living  scale. 
And  serpents,  bony  chains,  twisted  around 
The  iron  crags,  or  within  heaps  of  dust 
To  which  the  torturous  strength  of  their  last  pangs 
Had  crushed  the  iron  crags ;  and  over  these 
The  jagged  alligator,  and  the  might 
Of  earth-convulsing  behemoth,  which  once 
Were  monarch-beasts,  and  on  the  slimy  shores, 
And  weed-overgrown  continents  of  earth. 
Increased  and  multiplied  like  summer  worms 
On  an  abandoned  corpse,  till  the  blue  globe 
Wrapt  deluge  round  it  like  a  cloak,  and  they 
Yelled,  gasped,  and  were  abolished  ;  or  some  God, 
Whose  throne  was  in  a  comet,  past,  and  cried 
Be  not  I    And  like  my  words  they  were  no  more." 

Shelley  appears  not  to  have  been  completely  satisfied 
with  the  Promethean  story.  This  dissatisfaction  displays 
itself  in  a  characteristic  passage  of  his  preface  to  the 
Profnetheus  which  happens  very  felicitously  to  intro- 
duce the  only  other  set  of  antique  considerations  I  shall 
offer  you  on  this  subject.  "  Let  this  opportunity  "  (he 
says  in  one  place)  "  be  conceded  to  me  of  acknowledging 
that  I  have  what  a  Scotch  philosopher  characteristically 
terms  *  a  passion  for  reforming  the  world.'  .  .  .  But 
it  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  I  dedicate  my  poetical 
compositions  solely  to  the  direct  enforcement  of  reform, 
or  that  I  consider  them  in  any  degree  as  containing  a 
reasoned  system   on  the   theory   of  human    life.  .  .  . 


The  Development  of  Personality      109 

"...  Should  I  live  to  accomplish  what  I  purpose, 
that  is,  produce  a  systematical  history  of  what  appear 
to  me  to  be  the  genuine  elements  of  human  society,  let 
not  the  advocates  of  injustice  and  superstition  flatter 
themselves  that  I  should  take  ^schylus  rather  than 
Plato  as  my  model." 

In  Shelley's  poem  we  have  found  much  of  the  modern- 
ness  between  the  lines,  or  appearing  as  the  result, 
merely,  of  that  spirit  of  the  time  which  every  writer  must 
share  to  a  greater  or  less  extent  with  his  fellow-beings  of 
the  same  period.  But  as  we  proceed  now  to  examine 
Bayard  Taylor's  poem.  Prince  DeukalioUy  we  find  a 
man  not  only  possessed  with  modernness,  but  con- 
sciously possessed,  so  that  what  was  implicit  in  Shelley 
—  and  a  great  deal  more  —  here  becomes  explicit  and 
formulated. 

As  one  opens  the  book  a  powerful  note  of  modern- 
ness in  the  drama,  as  opposed  to  the  drama  of  iEschylus, 
strikes  us  at  the  outset  in  the  number  of  the  actors. 
One  may  imagine  the  amazement  of  old  ^schylus  as  he 
read  down  this  truly  prodigious  array  of  dramatos 
prosopa : 

Eos,  Goddess  of  the  Dawn;  Gaea,  Goddess  of  the 
Earth;  Eros;  Prometheus;  Epimetheus;  Pandora; 
Prince  Deukalion  ;  Pyrrha ;  Agathon ;  Medusa ;  Calchas ; 
Buddha ;  Spirits  of  Dawn ;  Nymphs ;  Chorus  of  Ghosts ; 
Charon;  Angels;  Spirits;  The  Nine  Muses;  Urania; 
Spirit  of  the  Wind ;  Spirit  of  the  Snow ;  Spirit  of  the 
Stream;  Echoes;  the  Youth;  the  Artist;  the  Poet; 
the  Shepherd ;  the  Shepherdess ;  the  Mediaeval  Chorus ; 
Mediaeval  Anti- Chorus ;  Chorus  of  Builders ;  Four  Mes- 
sengers. With  these  materials  Mr.  Taylor's  aim  is  to 
array  before  us  the  whole  panorama  of  time,  painted 
in  symbols  of  the  great  creeds  which  have  characterized 


no  The  English  Novel 

each  epoch.  These  epochs  are  four;  and  one  act  is 
devoted  to  each.  In  the  first  act  we  have  the  passing 
away  of  nymph  and  satyr  and  the  whole  antique  Greek 
mythos ;  and  we  are  shown  the  coming  man  and  woman 
in  the  persons  of  Prince  Deukalion  and  Pyrrha,  his 
wife-to-be,  whose  figures,  however,  are  as  yet  merely 
etched  upon  a  mist  of  prophecy. 

In  Act  II  we  have  the  reign  and  fall  of  the  mediaeval 
faith,  all  of  which  is  mysteriously  beheld  by  these  same 
shadowy  personalities,  Deukalion  and  Pyrrha.  In  Act 
III  the  faith  of  the  present  is  similarly  treated.  In  Act  IV 
we  have  at  last  the  coming  man,  or  developed  person- 
ality fairly  installed  as  ruler  of  himself  and  of  the  world, 
and  Prince  Deukalion  and  Pyrrha,  the  ideal  man  and 
the  ideal  woman  now  for  the  first  time  united  in  deed 
as  well  as  in  aspiration,  pace  forth  into  the  world  to 
learn  it  and  to  enjoy  it.  Mr.  Taylor,  as  I  said,  is  so 
explicit  upon  the  points  of  personality  and  modernness 
as  compared  with  the  ^schylean  play,  that  few  quota- 
tions would  be  needed  from  his  work,  and  I  will  not 
attempt  even  such  a  sketch  of  it  as  that  of  Shelley's. 
For  example,  in  Scene  I,  Act  I,  of  Prince  Deukalion^ 
Scene  I  being  given  in  the  stage  direction  as 

"  A  plain  sloping  from  high  mountains  towards  the  sea  ; 
at  the  bases  of  the  mountains  lofty ^  vaulted  entrances  of 
caverns ;  a  ruined  temple  on  a  rocky  height;  a  shepherd 
asleep  in  the  shadow  of  a  clump  of  laurels ;  the  flock 
scattered  over  the  plain y^  —  a  shepherd  awakes  and  won- 
deringly  describes  his  astonishment  at  certain  changes 
which  have  occurred  during  his  sleep.  This  shepherd, 
throughout  the  book,  is  a  symbol  of  the  mass  of  the  com- 
mon people,  the  great  herd  of  men.  Voices  from  various 
directions  interrupt  his  ejaculations ;  and  amongst  other 
utterances  of  this  sort  we  have  presently  one  from  the 


The  Development  of  Personality      iii 

nymphs  —  as  representative  of  the  Greek  nature- mythos 
—  which  is  quite  to  our  present  purpose. 

NYMPHS 

(Who  are  to  the  shepherd  voices  and  nothing  more) 

"  Our  service  hath  ceased  for  you,  shepherds  I 
We  fade  from  your  days  and  your  dreams, 
With  the  grace  that  was  lithe  as  a  leopard's, 
The  joy  that  was  swift  as  a  stream's  1 
To  the  musical  reeds,  and  the  grasses ; 
To  the  forest,  the  copse,  and  the  dell ; 
To  the  mist,  and  the  rainbow  that  passes, 
The  vine,  and  the  goblet,  farewell ! 
Go,  drink  from  the  fountains  that  flow  not  I 
Our  songs  and  our  whispers  are  dumb : 
But  the  thing  ye  are  doing  ye  know  not. 
Nor  dream  of  the  thing  that  shall  come." 

In  Scene  IV,  Deukalion,  leading  Pyrrha,  passes  into 
a  cavern,  the  last  mouth  of  Hades  left  on  the  earth. 
Presently  the  two  emerge  upon  "  a  shadowy,  colorless 
landscape,"  and  are  greeted  by  a  chorus  of  ghosts  which 
very  explicitly  formulates  that  dreary  impossibility  of 
growth  which  I  pointed  out  in  the  last  lecture  as  incident 
to  the  old  conception  of  personality. 

CHORUS  OF  GHOSTS. 

"  Away ! 
Ashes  that  once  were  fires, 
Darkness  that  once  was  day. 
Dead  passions,  dead  desires, 
Alone  can  enter  here  1 
In  rest  there  is  no  strife. 

Like  some  forgotten  star. 
What  first  we  were,  we  are. 
The  past  is  adamant : 
The  future  will  not  grant 
That,  which  in  all  its  range 
We  pray  for  —  change." 


112  The  English  Novel 

In  spite  of  these  warnings  they  push  on,  find  Charon 
at  his  old  place  by  the  dark  river,  but  are  left  to  row 
themselves  across,  Charon  pleading  age  and  long  unused 
joints,  and  after  many  adventures  find  Prometheus  who 
very  distinctly  declares  to  Prince  Deukalion  and  Pyrrha 
their  mission. 

«  Since  thou  adrift," 

says  Prometheus, 

"  And  that  immortal  woman  by  thy  side 
Floated  above  submerged  barbarity 
To  anchor,  weary,  on  the  cloven  mount. 
Thou  wast  my  representative." 

Prince  Deukalion  —  as  perhaps  many  will  remember  — 
cs  the  Noah  of  the  old  Promethean  cyclus,  and  the  story 
ran  that  the  drowned  world  was  miraculously  repeopled 
by  him  and  Pyrrha.  In  the  same  speech  Prometheus 
introduces  to  Deukalion  as  a  future  helper  his  brother 
Epimetheus  —  one  of  the  most  striking  conceptions  of  the 
old  fable  and  one  of  the  most  effective  characters  in  Mr. 
Taylor's  presentation.  We  saw  in  the  last  lecture  that 
Prometheus  was  called  the  Provident,  —  the  pro-metheus 
being  a  looking  forward.  Precisely  opposite  is  Epime- 
theus, that  is,  he  who  looks  epi  —  upon  or  backward. 
Perhaps  it  is  a  fair  contrast  to  regard  Prometheus  as  a 
symbol  of  striving  onward,  or  progress ;  and  Epimetheus 
as  a  symbol  of  the  historic  instinct,  the  instinct  which 
goes  back  and  clears  up  the  past  as  if  it  were  the  fiiture ; 
which  with  continual  effort  reconstructs  it ;  which  keeps 
the  to-be  in  full  view  of  what  has  been ;  which  reconciles 
progress  and  conservation.  Accordingly  the  old  story 
reports  Epimetheus  as  oldest  at  his  birth  and  growing 
younger  with  the  progress  of  the  ages. 


The  Development  of  Personality      1 13 

"  Take  one  new  comfort," 

continues  Prometheus, 

"  Epimetheus  lives ! 
Though  here  beneath  the  shadow  of  the  crags 
He  seems  to  slumber,  head  on  nerveless  knees, 
His  life  increases;  oldest  at  his  birth. 
The  ages  heaped  behind  him  shake  the  snow 
From  hoary  locks,  and  slowly  give  him  youth. 
*Tis  he  shall  be  thy  helper  :  Brother,  rise !  '* 

EPIMETHEUS  —  {coming  forward) 
**  I  did  not  sleep  :  I  mused.    Ha !  comest  thou,  Deukalion  ?  " 

PROMETHEUS. 

**  Soon  thy  work  shall  come  I 
Shame  shall  cease 
When  midway  on  their  paths  our  mighty  schemes 
Meet,  and  complete  each  other !    Yet  my  son, 
Deukalion  —  yet  one  other  guide  I  give, 
Eos !  " 

And  presently  Prometheus  leads  Deukalion  and  Pyrrha 
to  what  is  described  in  the  stage-direction  as  "  The 
highest  verge  of  the  rocky  table-land  of  Hades,  looking 
eastward"  Eos  is  summoned  by  Prometheus,  much 
high  conversation  ensues,  and  this,  the  sixth  and  last 
scene  of  the  first  act  ends  thus : 

Eos  {addressing  young  Deukalion  and  Pyrrha) 

*'  Faith,  when  none  believe ; 
Truth,  when  all  deceive  ; 
Freedom,  when  force  restrains ; 
Courage  to  sunder  chains ; 
Pride,  when  good  is  shame  ; 
Love,  when  love  is  blame,  — 
These  shall  call  me  in  stars  and  flame ! 

Thus  if  your  souls  have  wrought. 
Ere  ye  approach  me,  I  shine  unsought." 
8 


114  The  English  Novel 

But  Eos  proceeds  to  warn  Deukalion  and  Pyrrha  of 
long  trial,  and  of  many  disappointments,  closing  thus : 

"  When  darkness  falls, 
And  what  may  come  is  hard  to  see ; 

When  solid  adamant  walls 
Seem  built  against  the  Future  that  shall  be ; 
When  Faith  looks  backward,  Hope  dies,  Life  appals, 
Think  most  of  Morning  and  of  me !  " 

[The  rosy  glow  in  the  sky  fades  away] 

Prometheus  (to  Prince  Deukalion) 
**Go  back  to  Earth,  and  wait ! " 

Pandora  (to  Pyrrha) 
"  Go :  and  fulfil  our  fate  I " 

This  sketch  of  the  first  act  of  Taylor's  work  is  so 
typical  of  the  remainder  that  I  need  not  add  quotations 
from  the  second,  or  third,  or  fourth  act :  the  explicit 
modernness  of  the  treatment,  the  spirituality,  the  per- 
sonality of  it,  everywhere  forms  the  most  striking  con- 
trast to  the  treatment  of  -^schylus ;  and  I  will  close  the 
case  as  to  Prince  Deukalion  by  quoting  the  subtle  and 
wise  words  of  Prometheus  which  end  the  play.  The 
time  is  the  future  :  the  coming  man  and  woman,  Deuka- 
lion and  Pyrrha,  after  long  trial  and  long  separation  are 
at  last  allowed  to  marry  and  to  begin  their  earthly  life. 
These  are  Prometheus's  parting  words  to  them.  It  would 
be  difficult  to  imagine  one  plane  of  thought  farther 
removed  from  another  than  is  that  of  the  time-spirit 
which  here  speaks  through  Taylor,  from  the  time-spirit 
which  speaks  through  w^schylus.  Remembering  the 
relations  between  man  and  inexorable  nature,  between 
man  and  the  exterminating  god  which  we  saw  revealed 


The  Development  of  Personality      1 1 5 

by  the  Prometheus  of  ^schylus,  listen  to  these  relations 
prophesied  by  the  Prometheus  of  Taylor. 

**  Retrieve  perverted  destiny  1 " 

(In  iEschylus,  once  "  destiny  "  is  about,  all  retrieval 
grows  absurd.) 

"  'Tis  this  shall  set  your  children  free. 
The  forces  of  your  race  employ 
To  make  sure  heritage  of  joy ; 
Yet  feed,  with  every  earthly  sense, 
Its  heavenly  coincidence,  — 
That,  as  the  garment  of  an  hour ; 
This,  as  an  everlasting  power. 
For  Life,  whose  source  not  here  began, 
Must  fill  the  utmost  sphere  of  Man 
And,  so  expanding,  lifted  be 
Along  the  line  of  God's  decree, 
To  find  in  endless  growth  all  good,  — 
In  endless  toil,  beatitude. 
Seek  not  to  know  Him ;  yet  aspire 
As  atoms  toward  the  central  fire ! 
Not  lord  of  race  is  He,  afar,  — 
Of  Man,  or  Earth,  or  any  star. 
But  of  the  inconceivable  All ; 
Whence  nothing  that  there  is  can  fall 
Beyond  Him,  —  but  may  nearer  rise. 
Slow-circling  through  eternal  skies. 
His  larger  life  ye  cannot  miss, 
In  gladly,  nobly  using  this. 
Now,  as  a  child  in  April  hours 
Clasps  tight  its  handful  of  first  flowers. 
Homeward,  to  meet  His  purpose,  go !  — • 
These  things  are  all  ye  need  to  know." 

We  have  seen  that  Shelley  thought  of  producing  a 
history  of  "the  genuine  elements  of  human  society," 
taking  Plato  as  his  model,  instead  of  ^schylus.  Had 
he  done  so,  how  is  it  likely  he  would  have  fared  ?  It  so 
happens  that  of  all  the  monstrosities  of  thought  which 


ii6  The  English  Novel 

we  find  in  the  whole  Greek  cultus,  based  upon  the  failure 
to  conceive  personality,  the  most  monstrous  are  those 
which  originated  with  Plato.  And  since  you  have  now 
heard  this  word  personality  until  your  patience  must  be 
severely  taxed,  I  am  glad  to  say  that  I  can  now  close 
this  whole  pending  argument  which  I  have  announced 
as  our  first  line  of  research  in  a  short  and  conclusive 
way  by  asking  you  to  consider  for  a  moment  the  com- 
plete massacre  and  deliberate  extermination  of  all 
those  sacred  bases  of  personality  upon  which  the  fabric 
of  our  modern  society  rests  in  that  ideal  society  which 
Plato  has  embodied  in  his  Republic.  Nothing  is  more 
irresistible  than  the  conviction  that  the  being  who  planned 
Plato's  Republic  could  neither  have  had  the  least  actual 
sense  of  his  own  personality  nor  have  recognized  even 
theoretically  the  least  particle  of  its  real  significance. 
Fortunately  this  examination  can  be  made  with  great 
brevity  by  confining  our  attention  to  the  three  quite  con- 
clusive matters  of  marriage,  children,  and  property,  as 
they  are  provided  for  in  Book  V  of  Plato's  Republic, 

At  line  460  of  that  book  we  find  Socrates  inquiring : 
"  And  how  can  marriages  be  made  most  beneficial "  in 
our  ideal  republic?  and  presently  answering  his  own 
question  in  due  form.  I  quote  here  and  there,  to  make 
the  briefest  possible  showing  of  the  plan.  "Why  the 
principle  has  been  already  laid  down,  that  the  best  of 
either  sex  should  be  united  with  the  best  as  often  as 
possible ;  and  that  inferiors  should  be  prevented  from 
marrying  at  all."  "  Now  these  goings  on  must  be  a 
secret  which  the  rulers  only  know,  ...  or  there  will  be 
a  farther  danger  of  our  herd  .  .  .  breaking  into  rebel- 
lion." To  these  ends  we  had  "  better  appoint  certain 
festivals  at  which  the  brides  and  bridegrooms  "  (whom 
the  rulers  have  previously  selected  with  care  and  secrecy) 


The  Development  of  Personality      117 

"  will  be  brought  together,  and  sacrifices  will  be  offered 
and  suitable  hymeneal  songs  composed  by  our  poets ;  " 
.  .  .  and  we  *'  invent  some  ingenious  kind  of  lots  which 
the  less  worthy  may  draw."  In  short,  the  provision  for 
marriage  is  that  the  rulers  shall  determine  each  year 
how  many  couples  shall  marry,  and  shall  privately 
designate  a  certain  number  of  the  healthiest  couples  for 
that  purpose ;  at  the  annual  festival  all  marriageable 
couples  assemble  and  draw  lots,  these  lots  having  pre- 
viously been  so  arranged  that  all  unhealthy  or  in  any 
way  inferior  couples  shall  draw  blanks.  Of  course  this 
is  fraud,  but  Plato  defends  it  against  Glaucon's  objection 
thus  :  since  "  our  rulers  will  have  to  practice  on  the  body 
corporate  with  medicines  " ;  and  since  "  falsehood  and 
deceit "  may  "  be  used  with  advantage  as  medicines ; 
our  rulers  will  find  a  considerable  dose  of  these  "  (that 
is,  of  falsehood  and  deceit)  "  necessary  for  the  good  of 
their  subjects ;  .  .  .  and  this  lawful  use  of  them  seems 
likely  to  be  often  needed  in  the  regulations  of  mar- 
riages." The  couples  thus  married  eat  at  a  common 
table.  A  brave  youth,  as  a  reward  of  valor,  is  allowed 
more  than  one  wife. 

Such  are  the  marriage -arrangements  of  Plato's  ideal 
republic,  except  that  I  have  omitted  all  the  most  mon- 
strous provisions,  giving  only  the  rosiest  view  of  it. 
Reserving  comment,  let  us  see  how  the  children  are 
provided  for.  Immediately  after  birth  "The  proper 
officers  will  take  the  offspring  of  the  good  "  (or  healthy) 
"parents  to  "  a  certain  common  "fold,  and  there  .  .  . 
deposit  them  with  certain  nurses;  but  the  offspring  of 
the  inferior,  or  of  the  better  where  they  chance  to  De 
deformed,  will  be  put  away  in  some  mysterious  unknown 
place,  as  decency  requires ;  "  the  mothers  are  afterwards 
allowed  to  come  to  the  fold  to  nourish  the  children,  but 


ii8  The  English  Novel 

the  officers  are  to  take  "  the  greatest  care  that  no  mother 
recognizes  her  own  child : "  of  course  these  children, 
when  they  grow  up  are  to  be  also  bridegrooms  and 
brides,  and  the  problem  of  how  to  prevent  unknown 
brothers  and  sisters,  and  the  like,  from  marrying  is 
duly  attended  to ;  but  the  provisions  for  this  purpose  are 
at  once  so  silly  and  so  beastly  —  nay,  they  out-beast 
the  beasts  —  that  surely  no  one  can  read  them  without 
wishing  to  blot  out  the  moment  in  which  he  did  so. 

And  lastly  property  is  thus  disposed  of.  "  Then " 
(line  482,  Bk.  V,  Republic)  *'  the  community  of  wives 
and  children  is  clearly  the  source  of  the  greatest  good 
to  the  State,  .  .  .  and  agrees  with  the  other  principle 
that  the  guardians "  —  the  guardians  are  the  model 
citizens  of  this  ideal  republic  —  "  are  not  to  have  houses 
or  lands  or  any  other  property ;  their  pay  is  to  be  their 
food  and  they  are  to  have  no  private  expenses;  .  .  . 
Both  the  community  of  property  and  the  community  of 
families  .  .  .  tend  to  make  them  more  truly  guardians ; 
they  will  not  tear  the  city  in  pieces  by  differing  about 
meum  and  tuutn ;  the  one  dragging  any  acquisition 
which  he  has  made  into  a  house  of  his  own,  where  he 
has  a  separate  wife  and  children,  .  .  .  and  another 
into  another;  .  .  .  but  all  will  be  affected  as  far  as 
may  be  by  the  same  pleasures  and  pains ;  .  .  .  and,  as 
they  have  nothing  but  their  persons  which  they  can  call 
their  own,  suits  and  complaints  will  have  no  existence 
among  them." 

Now  as  soon  as  these  ideal  dispositions  of  Plato  are 
propounded  to  a  modem  hearer  they  send  an  instanta- 
neous shock  to  the  remotest  ends  of  his  nature ;  and 
what  I  will  ask  you  to  do  at  present  is  to  formulate  this 
shock  in  terms  of  personality.  Taking  for  example  the 
Platonic  provision  with  regard  to  marriage   (how  gro- 


The  Development  of  Personality      119 

tesquely,  by  the  way,  these  provisions  show  alongside  of 
what  have  gained  great  currency  as  "Platonic  attach- 
ments ")  :  perhaps  the  two  thousand  years  since  Plato 
have  taught  us  nothing  so  clearly  as  that  one  of  the 
most  mysterious  and  universal  elements  of  personality 
is  that  marvellous  and  absolutely  inconsequential  principle 
by  which  a  given  man  finds  himself  determined  to  love 
a  certain  woman,  or  a  given  woman  determined  to  love 
a  certain  man ;  and  if  we  look  back  we  find  that  the  most 
continuous  travail  of  the  ages  has  been  to  secure  perfect 
freedom  for  these  determinations. 

Does  it  not  seem  as  if  Time  grinned  at  us  in  some 
horrible  dream  when  we  remind  ourselves  that  here  the 
divine  Plato,  as  he  has  been  called,  and  the  unspeakable 
Zola  (as  some  of  us  have  learned  to  call  him)  have 
absolutely  come  cheek  by  jowl,  and  that  the  physiolog- 
ical marriage  of  Zola  is  no  more  nor  less  than  the 
ideal  marriage  of  Plato  ? 

Rejecting  comment  on  the  child-nursing  arrangement 
of  Plato  it  is  instructive  to  pass  on  and  regard  from  a 
different  point  of  view,  though  still  from  the  general 
direction  of  personality,  the  Platonic  community  of 
property.  If  men  desire  property,  says  Plato,  "one 
man's  desire  will  contravene  another's  and  we  shall 
have  trouble.  How  shall  we  remedy  it?  Crush  out 
the  desire  :  and  to  that  end  abolish  property." 

But  no,  cries  modern  personality  to  Plato,  cannot  you 
imagine  such  an  extension  of  personality  as  to  make  each 
man  see  that  on  the  whole  the  shortest  way  to  carry  out 
his  desires  for  property  is  to  respect  every  other  man's 
desire  for  property,  and  thus,  in  the  regulations  which 
will  necessarily  result  from  this  mutual  respect,  to  secure 
everything  he  acquires  by  spiritual  considerations  in- 
finitely more  effective  than  spears  and  bars? 


I20  The  English  Novel 

We  had  occasion  to  observe  the  other  day  how  com- 
plete has  been  the  success  of  this  doctrine  here  in  the 
United  States :  we  found  that  the  real  government  now 
going  on  is  individual,  personal,  —  not  at  Washington  — 
and  that  we  have  every  proper  desire,  —  of  love  in  mar- 
riage, of  having  one  woman  to  wife,  of  cherishing  our 
own  children,  of  accumulating  property,  —  secured  by 
external  law  apparently,  and  really  by  respect  for  that 
law  and  the  principles  of  personality  it  embodies. 

It  seems  curious  to  me  here  to  make  two  further  points 
of  contact  which,  taken  with  the  Zola  point  just  made, 
seem  to  tax  the  extremes  of  the  heavens  and  the  earth. 
Plato's  organic  principle  appears  to  emerge  from  some 
such  consideration  as  this.  A  boy  ten  years  old  is 
found  to  possess  a  wondrous  manual  deftness  :  he  can  do 
anything  with  his  fingers :  word  is  brought  to  Plato : 
what  shall  the  State  do  with  this  boy  ?  Why,  says  Plato, 
if  he  be  manually  so  adroit,  likely  he  will  turn  pickpocket : 
the  plain  course  is  to  chop  off  his  hands,  —  or  to  expose 
him  to  die  in  one  of  those  highly  respectable  places  such 
as  decency  requires  for  generally  unavailable  children. 

No,  says  the  modern  man :  you  are  destroying  his 
manifest  gift,  the  very  deepest  outcome  of  his  personality ; 
he  might  be  a  pickpocket,  true,  but  then  he  might  be  a 
great  violinist,  he  might  be  a  great  worker  in  all  manner 
of  materials  requiring  deftness  :  instead  of  cutting  off  his 
hands,  let  us  put  him  at  an  industrial  school,  let  us  set 
him  to  playing  the  violin,  let  us  cherish  him,  let  us 
develop  his  personality.  So,  Plato  takes  the  gift  of  acquir- 
ing property  —  for  it  is  a  real  gift  and  blessing  to  man  if 
properly  developed  —  and  he  will  chop  it  off,  that  is,  he 
will  crush  out  the  desire  of  property  by  destroying  the 
possibility  of  its  exercise. 

And  what  is  this  in  its  outcome  but  the  Nirvana  of  the 


The  Development  of  Personality      121 

Buddhistic  religion  ?  My  passions  keep  me  in  fear  and 
hope :  therefore  I  will  annihilate  them ;  when  I  neither 
think  nor  desire,  then  I  shall  rest,  then  I  shall  enjoy 
Nirvana.  Plato  institutes  a  Nirvana  for  the  ills  of  mar- 
riage, of  offspring,  of  property ;  and  he  realizes  it  by  the 
slow  death  through  inanition  of  the  desire  for  love,  for 
children,  for  property. 

And  as  we  have  found  the  Platonic  Plato  arguing  him- 
self into  a  Zola,  the  dialectic  Plato  arguing  himself  into 
a  dreaming  Buddha,  all  for  lack  of  the  sense  of  per- 
sonality, we  now  find  the  ideal  Plato  arguing  himself, 
for  the  same  lack,  into  a  sturdy  Whitman.  Think  of 
Plato's  community  of  property,  and  listen  to  Whitman's 
reverie,  as  he  looks  at  some  cattle.  It  is  curious  to 
notice  how  you  cannot  escape  a  certain  sense  of  naivety 
in  this,  and  how  you  are  taken  by  it,  —  until  a  moment's 
thought  shows  you  that  the  naivety  is  due  to  a  cunning 
and  bold  contradiction  of  every  fact  in  the  case. 

"  I  think  I  could  turn  and  live  with 

animals,  they  are  so  placid  and  self-contain'd : 
I  stand  and  look  at  them  long  and  long. 

**  Not  one  is  dissatisfied  —  not  one  is  demented 
with  the  mania  of  owning  things : 
Not  one  is  respectable  or  industrious  over  the 

whole  earth." 

The  Whitman  method  of  reaching  naivety  is  here  so 
funnily  illustrated  that  it  seems  worth  while  to  stop  a 
moment  and  point  it  out.  Upon  the  least  reflection,  one 
must  see  that  "  animals  "  here  must  mean  cows,  and  well- 
fed  cows;  for  they  are  about  the  only  animals  in  the 
world  to  whom  these  items  would  apply.  For,  says 
Whitman,  "not  one  is  dissatisfied,  not  one  is  demented 
with  the  mania  of  owning  things  :  "  but  suppose  he  were 


122  The  English  Novel 

taking  one  of  his  favorite  night-strolls  in  the  woods  of 
Bengal  rather  than  of  New  Jersey,  is  it  not  more  than 
probable  that  the  first  animal  he  met  would  be  some 
wicked  tiger  not  only  dissatisfied,  but  perfectly  demented 
with  the  mania  of  owning  Mr.  Whitman,  the  only  kind 
of  property  the  tiger  knows  ?  Seriously,  when  we  reflect 
that  property  to  the  animal  means  no  more  than  food  or 
nest  or  lair,  and  that  the  whole  wing-shaken  air  above 
us,  the  earth-surface  about  us,  the  earth-crust  below  us, 
the  seas,  and  all,  are  unceasingly  agog  day  and  night 
with  the  furious  activity  of  animals  quite  as  fairly  de- 
mented with  the  mania  of  owning  their  property  as  men 
theirs ;  and  that  it  is  only  the  pampered  beast  who  is 
not  so  demented,  —  the  cow,  for  instance,  who  has  her 
property  duly  brought  to  her  in  a  pail  so  many  times  a 
day,  and  no  more  to  do  but  to  enjoy  the  cud  thereof 
until  next  feed-time,  —  we  have  a  very  instructive  model 
of  methods  by  which  poetry  can  make  itself  naive. 

And  finally  what  a  conclusive  light  is  shed  upon  the 
principles  supporting  Plato's  community  of  property, 
when  we  bring  forward  the  fact,  daily  growing  more  and 
more  notable,  that  along  with  the  modern  passion  for 
acquiring  property  has  grown  the  modern  passion  of 
giving  away  property,  that  is,  of  charity?  What  ancient 
scheme  ever  dreamed  of  the  multitudinous  charitable 
organizations  of  some  of  our  large  cities  ?  Charity  has 
become  organic  and  a  part  of  the  system  of  things ;  it 
has  sometimes  overflowed  its  bounds  so  that  great  social 
questions  now  pend  as  to  how  we  shall  direct  the  over- 
flowing charitable  instincts  of  society  so  as  really  to  help 
the  needy  and  not  pamper  the  lazy :  its  public  manifes- 
tations are  daily,  its  private  ministrations  are  endless. 

Plato  would  have  crushed  the  instinct  of  property ;  but 
the  instinct,  vital  part  of  man's  personality,  as  it  is,  has 


The  Development  of  Personality      123 

taken  care  of  itself,  has  been  cherished  and  encouraged 
by  the  modern  cultus,  and  behold,  instead  of  breeding  a 
wild  pandemonium  of  selfishness  as  Plato  argued,  it  has 
in  its  orderly  progress  developed  this  wonderful  new  out- 
growth of  charity  which  fills  every  thoughtful  man's 
heart  with  joy,  because  it  covers  such  a  multitude  of  the 
sins  of  the  time. 

I  have  been  somewhat  earnest  —  I  fear  tediously  so  — 
upon  this  matter,  because  I  have  seen  what  seem  the 
greatest  and  most  mischievous  errors  concerning  it 
receiving  the  stamp  of  men  who  usually  think  with 
clearness  and  who  have  acquired  just  authority  in  many 
premises. 

It  would  not  be  fair  to  the  very  different  matters  which 
I  have  now  to  treat,  to  detail  these  errors ;  and  I  will 
only  mention  that  if,  with  these  principles  of  personality 
fairly  fixed  in  one's  mind,  one  reads  for  example  the 
admirable  Introduction  of  Professor  Jowett  to  his  trans- 
lation of  Plato's  Republic,  one  has  a  perfect  clew  to  many 
of  the  problems  over  which  that  translator  labors  with 
results  which,  I  think,  cannot  be  conclusive  to  his  own 
mind. 

Here,  too,  no  one  can  be  satisfied  with  the  otherwise 
instructive  chapter  on  Individuality  in  Professor  Eucken's 
Fundamental  Concepts  of  Modern  Philosophic  Thought, 
Eucken's  direct  reference  to  Plato's  Republic  is  evidently 
made  upon  only  a  very  vague  recollection  of  Plato's 
doctrine,  which  is  always  dangerous.  "The  complete 
subordination  and  sacrifice  of  the  individual  expressed 
in  Plato's  idea  of  a  state  arose  from  his  opposition  to  a 
tendency  of  the  times  which  he  considered  pernicious, 
and  so  is  characterized  rather  by  moral  energy  and 
intensity  of  feeling  than  by  the  quiet  and  simple  resig- 
nation to  the  objective  which  we  find  in  the  great  men 


124  The  English  Novel 

of  the  preceding  period."  But  a  mere  "  opposition  to  a 
tendency  of  the  times  "  could  never  have  bred  this  elabo- 
rate and  sweeping  annihilation  of  individuality ;  and  it  is 
forgotten  that  Plato  is  not  here  legislating  for  his  times 
or  with  the  least  dream  of  the  practical  establishment  of 
his  Republic  :  again  and  again  he  declares  his  doubts  as 
to  the  practicability  of  his  plans  for  any  time.  No,  he 
is  building  a  republic  for  all  time,  and  is  consistently 
building  upon  the  ruins  of  that  personality  which  he  was 
not  sensible  of  except  in  its  bad  outcome  as  selfishness. 

I  must  add  that  there  was  an  explicit  theory  of 
what  was  called  Individuality  among  the  Greeks ;  the 
phenomenon  of  the  unaccountable  differences  of  men 
from  birth  early  attracted  those  sharp  eyes,  and  the 
Stoics  and  others  soon  began  to  build  in  various  direc- 
tions from  this  basis.  But  just  as  the  Greeks  had  a 
theory  of  harmony,  though  harmony  was  not  developed 
until  the  last  century,  —  as  Richter  says  somewhere  that 
a  man  may  contemplate  the  idea  of  death  for  twenty 
years,  and  only  in  some  moment  of  the  twenty-first 
suddenly  have  the  realization  of  death  come  upon  him, 
and  shake  his  soul  —  so  their  theory  of  individuality 
must  have  been  wholly  amateur,  not  a  working  element, 
and  without  practical  result.  Surely,  we  seem  in  condi- 
tion to  say  so  with  confidence  if  you  run  your  minds 
back  along  this  line  of  development  which  now  comes 
to  an  end.  For  what  have  we  done?  We  have  inter- 
rogated T^schylus  and  Plato,  whom  we  may  surely  call 
the  two  largest  and  most  typic  spirits  of  the  whole  Greek 
cultus,  upon  the  main  fact  of  personality;  we  have 
verified  the  abstract  with  the  concrete  by  questioning 
them  upon  the  most  vital  and  well-known  elements 
of  personality :  what  do  you  believe  about  spiritual 
growth,   about   spiritual  compactness,  about  true  love, 


The  Development  of  Personality      125 

marriage,  children,  property?  and  we  have  received 
answers  which  show  us  that  they  have  not  yet  caught 
a  conception  of  what  personaHty  means,  and  that  when 
they  expUcitly  discuss  individuality  in  their  theories, 
it  is  a  discussion  of  blind  men  about  colors. 


126  The  English  Novel 


VI 


We  are  now  to  enter  upon  the  second  of  our  four 
lines  of  study  by  concentrating  our  attention  upon  three 
historic  details  in  the  growth  of  this  personality  whose 
general  advance  has  been  so  carefully  illustrated  in  our 
first  line.  These  details  are  found  in  the  sudden  rise  of 
Physical  Science,  of  Modern  Music,  and  of  the  Modern 
Novel,  at  periods  of  time  so  Httle  separated  from  each 
other  that  we  may  consider  these  great  fields  of  human 
activity  as  fairly  opening  simultaneously  to  the  en- 
trance of  man  about  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries. 

Addressing  ourselves  first  then  to  the  idea  of  Science, 
let  us  place  ourselves  at  a  point  of  view  from  which  we 
can  measure  with  precision  the  actual  height  and  nature 
of  the  step  which  man  took  in  ascending  from  the  plane 
of,  say,  Aristotle's  "  science  "  to  that  of  Sir  Isaac  New- 
ton's "science."  And  the  only  possible  method  of 
placing  ourselves  at  this  point  of  view  is  to  pass  far 
back  and  fix  ourselves  in  the  attitude  which  antiquity 
maintained  towards  physical  nature,  and  in  which  suc- 
ceeding ages  comfortably  dozed,  scarcely  disturbed  even 
by  Roger  Bacon's  feeble  protest  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury, until  it  was  shocked  out  of  all  future  possibility  by 
Copernicus,  Galileo  and  Sir  Isaac  Newton. 

Accordingly,  in  pursuance  of  our  custom  of  abandon- 
ing abstract  propositions  at  the  earliest  moment  when 
we  can  embody  them  in  terms  of  the  concrete,  let  us 


The  Development  of  Personality      127 

spend  a  quiet  hour  in  contemplating  some  of  the  specific 
absurdities  of  our  ancestors  in  scientific  thought  and  in 
generaHzing  them  into  the  lack  of  personality.  Let  us 
go  and  sit  with  Socrates  on  his  prison-bed,  in  the  Phcedot 
and  endeavor  to  see  this  matter  of  man's  scientific  rela- 
tion to  physical  nature,  with  his  sight.  Hear  Socrates 
talking  to  Simmias :  he  is  discussing  the  method  of 
acquiring  true  knowledge  :  it  is  well  we  are  invisible  as 
we  sit  by  him,  for  we  cannot  keep  back  a  quiet  smile,  — 
we  who  come  out  of  a  beautiful  and  vast  scientific 
acquirement  all  based  upon  looking  at  things  with  our 
eyes,  we  whose  very  intellectual  atmosphere  is  distilled 
from  the  proverb,  "  seeing  is  believing  "  —  when  we  hear 
these  grave  propositions  of  the  wisest  antique  man.  "  But 
what  of  the  acquisition  of  wisdom,"  says  Socrates  :  .  .  . 
"  do  the  sight  and  hearing  convey  any  certainty  to  man- 
kind, or  are  they  such  as  the  poets  incessantly  report 
them,  who  say  that  we  neither  hear  nor  see  anything  as 
it  is?  ...  Do  they  not  seem  so  to  you?" 

"They  do,  indeed,"  replied  Simmias.  "  When,  then,'* 
continued  Socrates,  "  does  the  soul  attain  to  the  truth  ? 
For  when  it  attempts  to  investigate  anything  along  with 
the  body,  it  is  plain  that  the  soul  is  led  astray  by  the 
body.  ...  Is  it  not  by  reasoning,  if  by  anything,  that 
reality  is  made  manifest  to  the  soul?" 

"  Certainly." 

But  now  Socrates  advances  a  step  to  show  that  not 
only  are  we  misled  when  we  attempt  to  get  knowledge 
by  seeing  things,  but  that  nothing  worth  attention  is 
capable  of  being  physically  seen.  I  shall  have  occasion 
to  recur  in  another  connection  to  the  curious  fallacy 
involved  in  this  part  of  Socrates'  argument.  He  goes  on 
to  inquire  of  Simmias :  "  Do  we  assert  that  Justice  is 
anything,  or  not?" 


128  The  English  Novel 

"  We  say  that  it  is." 

"  And  beauty  and  goodness,  also  ?  " 

"Surely." 

"  Did  you  ever  see  anything  of  the  kind  with  youi 
eyes?" 

"  Never,"  replied  Simmias. 

.  .  .  "Then,"  continues  Socrates,  "  whoever  amongst 
us  prepares,  with  the  greatest  caution  and  accuracy,  to 
reflect  upon  that  particular  thing  by  itself  upon  which 
he  is  inquiring"  and  .  .  .  "using  reflection  alone, 
endeavors  to  investigate  every  reaHty  by  itself,  .  .  . 
abstaining  as  much  as  possible  from  the  use  of  the  eyes 
...  is  not  such  an  one,  if  any,  likely  to  arrive  at  what 
really  exists?" 

"You  speak,  Socrates,"  answered  Simmias,  "with 
amazing  truth." 

It  is  curious  to  note  in  how  many  particulars  this  pro- 
cess of  acquiring  knowledge  is  opposed  to  that  of  the 
modern  scientific  man.  Observe  specially  that  Socrates 
wishes  to  investigate  every  reality  by  itself,  while  we  on 
the  contrary  fly  from  nothing  with  so  much  vehemence 
as  from  an  isolated  fact ;  it  maddens  us  until  we  can  put 
it  into  relation  with  other  facts,  and  delights  us  in  pro- 
portion to  the  number  of  facts  with  which  we  can  relate 
it.  In  that  book  of  multitudinous  suggestions  which 
Novalis  (Friedrich  Von  Hardenberg)  calls  The  Pupil  at 
Sats,  one  of  the  most  modern  sentences  is  that  where, 
after  describing  many  studies  of  his  wondrous  pupil, 
Novalis  adds  that  "  erelong  he  saw  nothing  alone." 

Surely  one  of  the  earliest  and  most  delightful  sensa- 
tions one  has  in  spiritual  growth,  after  one  has  acquired 
the  true  synthetic  habit  which  converts  knowledge  into 
wisdom,  is  that  delicious,  universal  impulse  which  accom- 
panies every  new  acquisition  as  it  runs  along  like  a  warp 


The  Development  of  Personality      129 

across  the  woof  of  our  existing  acquisition,  making  a 
pleasant  tang  of  contact,  as  it  were,  with  each  related 
fibre. 

But  Plato  speaks  even  more  directly  upon  our  present 
point,  in  advocating  a  similar  attitude  towards  physical 
science.  In  Book  VII,  of  the  Republic^  he  puts  these 
words  into  the  mouth  of  Socrates :  *'  And  whether  a 
man  gapes  at  the  heavens,  or  blinks  on  the  ground,  seeking 
to  learn  some  particular  of  sense,  I  would  deny  that  he 
can  learn,  for  nothing  of  that  sort  is  matter  of  science." 

Of  course  these,  as  the  opinions  of  professed  idealists, 
would  not  be  representative  of  the  Greek  attitude  towards 
physical  science.  Yet  when  we  turn  to  those  who  are 
pre-eminently  physical  philosophers  we  find  that  the 
mental  disposition,  though  the  reverse  of  hostile,  is 
nearly  always  such  as  to  render  the  work  of  these 
philosophers  unfruitful.  When  we  find,  for  example, 
that  Thales  in  the  very  beginning  of  Greek  philosophy 
holds  the  principle,  or  beginning,  rj  apx^  of  all  things  to 
be  moisture,  or  water ;  that  Anaximenes  a  little  while 
after  holds  the  beginning  of  things  to  be  air;  that 
Heraclitus  holds  the  ar^he  to  be  fire :  this  sounds 
physical,  and  we  look  for  a  great  extension  of  men's 
knowledge  in  regard  to  water,  air  and  fire,  upon  the 
idea  that  if  these  are  really  the  organic  principles  of 
things  thousands  of  keen  inquiring  eyes  would  be  at  once 
levelled  upon  them,  thousands  of  experiments  would  be 
at  once  set  on  foot,  all  going  to  reveal  properties  of 
water,  air  and  fire.  But  perhaps  no  more  expressive 
summary  of  the  real  relation  between  man  and  nature, 
not  only  during  the  Greek  period  but  for  many  cen- 
turies after  it,  could  be  given  than  the  fact  that  these 
three  so-called  elements  which  begin  the  Greek  physical 
philosophy  remained  themselves  unknown  for  more  than 

9 


ijo  The  English  Novel 

two  thousand  years  after  Thales  and  Anaximenes  and 
Heraclitus,  until  the  very  last  century  when,  with  the 
discovery  of  oxygen,  men  are  able  to  prove  that  they 
are  not  elements  at  all,  but  that  what  we  call  fire  is 
merely  an  effect  of  the  rapid  union  of  oxygen  with 
bodies,  while  water  and  air  are  compounds  of  it  with 
other  gases.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  in  the  years  be- 
tween Thales  and  the  death  of  Aristotle  a  considerable 
body  of  physical  facts  had  been  accumulated;  that 
Pythagoras  had  observed  a  number  of  acoustic  phe- 
nomena and  mathematically  formulated  their  relations ; 
it  is  true  that  —  without  detaining  you  to  specify  inter- 
mediate inquirers  —  we  have  that  wonderful  summary  of 
Aristotle  —  wonderful  for  one  man  —  which  is  contained 
in  his  Physics t  those  Physics  from  which  the  name  "  meta- 
physics "  originated,  through  the  circumstance  that  he 
placed  the  other  books  after  those  on  physics,  calling 
them  Ta  ftcra  rh.  (fivatxa  )8ty8Ata,  the  meta-physical,  or 
over  and  above  physical,  books. 

When  we  read  the  titles  of  these  productions  —  here 
are  "  Eight  Books  of  Physical  Lectures,"  "  Four  Books 
of  the  Heavens,"  "Two  Books  of  Production  and 
Destruction,"  Treatises  "On  Animals,"  "On  Plants," 
"  On  Colors,"  "  On  Sound  "  — we  feel  that  we  must  be 
in  a  veritable  realm  of  physical  science.  But  if  we 
examine  these  lectures  and  treatises,  which  probably 
contain  the  entire  body  of  Greek  physical  learning,  we 
find  them  hampered  by  a  certain  disabiUty  which  seems 
to  me  characteristic  not  only  of  Greek  thought,  but  of 
all  man's  early  speculation,  and  which  excludes  the 
possibility  of  a  fruitful  and  progressive  physical  science. 
I  do  not  know  how  to  characterize  this  disability  other- 
wise than  by  calling  it  a  lack  of  that  sense  of  personal 
gelation  to  fact  which  makes  the  thinker  passionately  and 


The  Development  of  Personality      131 

supremely  solicitous  about  the  truth,  that  is,  the  exist- 
ence of  his  facts  and  the  soundness  of  his  logic  :  solicitous 
of  these  not  so  much  with  reference  to  the  value  of  his 
conclusions  as  because  of  an  inward  tender  inexorable 
yearning  for  the  truth  and  nothing  but  the  tmth.  In 
short,  I  find  that  early  thought  everywhere,  whether 
dealing  with  physical  facts  or  metaphysical  problems,  is 
lacking  in  what  I  may  call  the  intellectual  conscience  — 
the  conscience  which  makes  Mr.  Darwin  spend  long 
and  patient  years  in  investigating  small  facts  before 
daring  to  reason  upon  them,  and  which  makes  him 
state  the  facts  adverse  to  his  theory  with  as  much  care  as 
the  facts  which  make  for  it. 

Part  of  the  philosophy  of  this  personal  relation  between 
a  man  and  a  fact  is  very  simple.  For  instance  what  do 
you  know  at  present  of  the  inner  life  of  the  Patagonians  ? 
Probably  no  more  than  your  Mitchell's  or  Cornell's 
Geography  told  you  at  school.  But  if  a  government 
expedition  is  soon  to  carry  you  to  the  interior  of  that 
country,  a  personal  relation  arises  which  will  probably 
set  you  to  searching  all  the  libraries  at  your  command 
for  such  travels  or  treatises  as  may  enlarge  your 
knowledge  of  Patagonia. 

It  is  easy  to  give  a  thousand  illustrations  of  this  lack 
of  intellectual  conscience  in  Greek  thought  which  con- 
tinued indeed  up  to  the  time  of  the  Renaissance.  For 
example  :  it  would  seem  that  nothing  less  than  a  sort  of 
amateur  mental  attitude  towards  nature,  an  attitude  which 
does  not  bind  the  thinker  to  his  facts  with  such  iron  con- 
scientiousness that  if  one  fact  were  out  of  due  order  it 
would  rack  him,  could  account  for  Aristotle's  grave  ex- 
position of  the  four  elements.  "  We  seek,"  he  says,  "  the 
principles  of  sensible  things,  that  is  of  tangible  bodies. 
We  must  take  therefore  not  all  the  contrarieties  of  quality 


132  The  English  Novel 

but  those  only  which  have  reference  to  the  touch.  .  .  . 
Now  the  contrarieties  of  quality  which  refer  to  the  touch 
are  these  :  hot,  cold ;  dry,  wet ;  heavy,  light ;  hard,  soft ; 
unctuous,  meagre ;  rough,  smooth ;  dense,  rare."  Aris- 
totle then  rejects  the  last  three  couplets  on  several 
grounds  and  proceeds :  "  Now  in  four  things  there  are 
six  combinations  of  two ;  but  the  combinations  of  two 
opposites,  as  hot  and  cold,  must  be  rejected ;  we  have 
therefore  four  elementary  combinations  which  agree  with 
the  four  apparently  elementary  bodies.  Fire  is  hot  and 
dry  j  air  is  hot  and  wet ;  water  is  cold  and  wet ;  earth  is  cold 
and  dry."  And  thus  we  comfortably  fare  forward  with  fire, 
air,  earth  and  water  for  the  four  elements  of  all  things. 

But  Aristotle  argues  that  there  must  be  a  fifth  element : 
and  our  modem  word  quintessence  is,  by  the  way,  a  relic 
of  this  argument,  this  fifth  element  having  been  called  by 
later  writers  quinta  essentia  or  quintessence.  The  argu- 
ment is  as  follows  :  "  the  simple  elements  must  have  simple 
motions,  and  thus  fire  and  air  have  their  natural  motions 
upwards  and  water  and  earth  have  their  natural  motions 
downwards ;  but  besides  these  motions  there  is  motion 
in  a  circle  which  is  unnatural  to  these  elements,  but 
which  is  a  more  perfect  motion  than  the  other,  because  a 
circle  is  a  perfect  line  and  a  straight  line  is  not ;  and  there 
must  be  something  to  which  this  motion  is  natural.  From 
this  it  is  evident  that  there  is  some  essence  or  body  dif- 
ferent from  those  of  the  four  elements,  .  .  .  and  superior 
to  them.  If  things  which  move  in  a  circle  move  contrary 
to  nature  it  is  marvelous,  or  rather  absurd  that  this  the 
unnatural  motion  should  alone  be  continuous  and  eternal ; 
for  unnatural  motions  decay  speedily.  And  so  from  all 
this  we  must  collect  that  besides  the  four  elements  which 
we  have  here  and  about  us  there  is  another  removed  far 
off  and  the  more  excellent  in  proportion  as  it  is  more 
distant  from  us." 


The  Development  of  Personality      133 

Or  take  Aristotle's  dealing  with  the  heaviness  and 
lightness  of  bodies. 

After  censuring  former  writers  for  considering  these 
as  merely  relative,  he  declares  that  lightness  is  a  positive 
or  absolute  property  of  bodies  just  as  weight  is ;  that  earth 
is  absolutely  heavy,  and  therefore  tends  to  take  its  place 
below  the  other  three  elements ;  that  fire  has  the  posi- 
tive property  of  lightness,  and  hence  tends  to  take  its 
place  above  the  other  three  elements ;  (the  modern  word 
empyrean  is  a  relic  of  this  idea  from  the  pyr  or  fire,  thus 
collected  in  the  upper  regions) ,  and  so  on ;  and  concludes 
that  bodies  which  have  the  heavy  property  tend  to  the 
centre,  while  those  with  the  light  property  tend  to  the 
exterior,  of  the  earth,  because  "  Exterior  is  opposite  to 
Centre,  as  heavy  is  to  light." 

This  conception,  or  rather  misconception,  of  opposites 
appears  most  curiously  in  two  of  the  proofs  which  Socrates 
offers  for  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and  I  do  not  know 
how  I  can  better  illustrate  the  infirmity  of  antique  thought 
which  I  have  just  been  describing  than  by  citing  the 
arguments  of  Socrates  in  that  connection  according  to 
the  Phcedo.    Socrates  introduced  it  with  special  solemnity. 

"  I  do  not  imagine,"  he  says,  "  that  any  one,  not  even  if 
he  were  a  comic  poet,  would  now  say  that  I  am  trifling.  .  .  . 
Let  us  examine  it  in  this  point  of  view,  whether  the  souls  of 
the  dead  survive  or  not. 

"  Let  us  consider  this,  whether  it  is  absolutely  necessary  in 
the  case  of  as  many  things  as  have  a  contrary,  that  this  con- 
trary should  arise  from  no  other  source  than  from  a  contrary 
to  itself.  For  instance,  where  anything  becomes  greater, 
must  it  not  follow  that  from  being  previously  less  it  subse- 
quently became  greater  ?  '* 

"Yes." 

"So  too,  if  anything  becomes  less,  shall  it  become  so  sub- 
sequently to  its  being  previously  greater  ?  " 


134  The  English  Novel 

"  Such  is  the  case,"  said  Cebes. 

"And  weaker  from  stronger,  swifter  from  slower,  .  .  « 
worse  from  better,  juster  from  more  unjust  ?  " 

"  Surely." 

"  We  are  then  sufficiently  assured  of  this,  that  all  things 
are  so  produced,  contraries  from  contraries  ? " 

"  Sufficiently  so." 

"...  Do  you  now  tell  me  likewise  in  regard  to  life  and 
death.     Do  you  not  say  that  death  is  the  contrary  of  life  ?  " 

"  I  say  so." 

"  And  that  they  are  produced  from  each  other  ?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  What  then  is  that  which  is  produced  from  life  ?  " 

"  Death,"  said  Cebes. 

"  And  that  which  is  produced  from  death  ?  " 

"  I  must  allow,"  said  Cebes,  "  to  be  life." 

"  Therefore,  our  souls  exist  after  death." 

This  is  one  formal  argument  of  Socrates.  He  now 
goes  on  speaking  to  his  friends  during  that  fatal  day  at 
great  length,  setting  forth  other  arguments  in  favor  of 
the  immortality  of  the  soul.  Finally  he  comes  to  the 
argument  which  he  applies  to  the  soul,  that  magnitude 
cannot  admit  its  contrary,  the  small,  but  that  one  retires 
when  the  other  approaches.  At  this  point  he  is  inter- 
rupted by  one  who  remembers  his  former  position. 
Plato  relates : 

Then  some  one  of  those  present  (but  who  he  was  I  do  not 
clearly  recollect)  when  he  heard  this  said,  "  In  the  name  of 
the  gods,  was  not  the  very  contrary  of  what  is  now  asserted 
laid  down  in  the  previous  part  of  the  discussion,  that  the 
greater  is  produced  from  the  less  and  the  less  from  the 
greater,  and  this  positively  was  the  mode  of  generating  con- 
traries from  contraries?"  Upon  which  Socrates  said  .  .  . 
"Then  it  was  argued  that  a  contrary  thing  was  produced 
from  a  contrary;  but  now,  that  contrary  itself  can  never 
become    its    own    contrary.  .  .  .  But    observe    further    if 


The  Development  of  Personality      135 

you  will  agree  with  me  in  this.  Is  there  anything  you  call 
heat  and  cold  ?  '* 

"  Certainly." 

"  The  same  as  snow  and  fire  ?  " 

"  Assuredly  not." 

*•  Is  heat,  then,  something  different  from  fire,  and  cold 
something  different  from  snow  ?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  But  this  I  think  is  evident  to  you,  that  snow  while  it  is 
snow  can  never,  having  admitted  heat,  continue  to  be  what 
it  was,  snow  and  hot,  but  on  the  approach  of  heat  will  either 
give  way  to  it  or  be  destroyed." 

"  Certainly  so." 

"  And  fire,  on  the  other  hand,  on  the  approach  of  cold, 
must  either  give  way  to  it  or  be  destroyed,  nor  can  it  ever 
endure,  having  admitted  cold,  to  continue  to  be  what  it  was, 
fire  and  cold.  .  .  .  Such  I  assert  to  be  the  case  with  the 
number  3  and  many  other  numbers.  Shall  we  not  insist 
that  the  number  3  shall  perish  first  .  .  .  before  it  would  en- 
dure while  it  was  yet  3  to  become  even  ?  .  .  .  What,  then  ? 
what  do  we  now  call  that  which  does  not  admit  the  idea  of 
the  even  ?  " 

"  Odd,"  replied  he. 

"  And  that  which  does  not  admit  the  just,  nor  the  grace- 
ful ? " 

"  The  one,  ungraceful,  and  the  other,  unjust." 

"  Be  it  so.  But  by  what  name  do  we  call  that  which  does 
not  admit  death  ?  " 

"  Immortal." 

"  Does  the  soul,  then,  not  admit  death  ?  "  (Socrates  has 
already  suggested  that  whatever  the  soul  occupies  it  brings 
life  to.) 

«  No." 

"  Is  the  soul,  therefore,  immortal  ?  " 

"  Immortal." 

Socrates*  argument  drawn  from  the  number  3  brings 
before  us  a  great  host  of  these  older  absurdities  of  scien- 
tific thought,  embracing  many  grave  conclusions  drawn 


136  The  English  Novel 

from  fanciful  considerations  of  number,  everywhere 
occurring.  For  briefest  example  :  Aristotle  in  his  book 
On  the  Heavens  proves  that  the  world  is  perfect  by 
the  following  complete  argument :  "  The  bodies  of  which 
the  world  is  composed  .  .  .  have  three  dimensions ;  now 
3  is  the  most  perfect  number ;  ...  for  of  i  we  do  not 
speak  as  a  number;  of  2  we  say  both;  but  3  is 
the  first  number  of  which  we  say  all;  moreover,  it 
has  a  beginning,  a  middle  and  an  end."  You  may 
instructively  compare  with  this  the  marvelous  matters 
which  the  school  of  Pythagoras  educed  out  of  their  per- 
fect number  which  was  4,  or  the  tetractys ;  and  Plato's 
number  of  the  Republic  which  commentators  to  this  day 
have  not  settled. 

These  illustrations  seem  sufficient  to  show  a  mental 
attitude  towards  facts  which  is  certainly  like  that  one  has 
towards  a  far-off  country  which  one  does  not  expect  to 
visit.  The  illustration  I  have  used  is  curiously  borne 
out  by  a  passage  in  Lactantius,  writing  so  far  down  as 
the  fourth  century :  in  which  we  have  a  picture  of  mediae- 
val relations  towards  nature,  and  of  customary  dis- 
cussions. 

"  To  search,'*  says  he,  "  for  the  causes  of  natural 
things;  to  inquire  whether  the  sun  be  as  large  as  he 
seems,  whether  the  moon  is  convex  or  concave,  whether 
the  stars  are  fixed  in  the  sky  or  float  freely  in  the  air ; 
of  what  size  and  what  material  are  the  heavens ;  whether 
they  be  at  rest  or  in  motion ;  what  is  the  magnitude  of 
the  earth ;  on  what  foundations  it  is  suspended  and  bal- 
anced ;  —  to  dispute  and  conjecture  on  such  matters  is 
just  as  if  we  chose  to  discuss  what  we  think  of  a  city  in 
a  remote  country  of  which  we  never  heard  but  the  name." 

Perhaps  this  defect  of  thought,  this  lack  of  personality 
towards  facts,  is  most  strikingly  perceived  in  the  slowness 


The  Development  of  Personality      137 

with  which  most  primary  ideas  of  the  form  and  motion 
of  the  earth  made  their  way  among  men.  Although 
astronomy  is  the  oldest  of  sciences  and  the  only  pro- 
gressive science  of  antiquity ;  and  although  the  idea  that 
the  earth  was  a  sphere  was  one  of  the  earliest  in  Greek 
philosophy ;  yet  this  same  Lactantius  in  the  fourth  cen- 
tury is  vehemently  arguing  as  follows  :  "  Is  it  possible  that 
men  can  be  so  absurd  as  to  believe  that  the  crops  and 
trees  on  the  other  side  of  the  earth  hang  downwards, 
and  that  men  there  have  their  feet  higher  than  their 
heads  ?  If  you  ask  of  them  how  they  defend  these  mon- 
strosities —  how  things  do  not  fall  away  from  the  earth 
on  that  side  ?  they  reply  that  the  nature  of  things  is  such 
that  heavy  bodies  tend  towards  the  centre,  like  the  spokes 
of  a  wheel,  while  light  bodies,  as  clouds,  smoke,  fire,  tend 
from  the  earth  towards  the  heavens  on  all  sides.  Now  I 
am  really  at  a  loss  what  to  say  of  those  who,  when  they 
have  once  gone  wrong,  steadily  persevere  in  their  folly 
and  defend  one  absurd  opinion  by  another." 

And  coming  on  down  to  the  eighth  century,  the  anec- 
dote is  well  known  of  honest  Bishop  Virgil  of  Salisbury, 
who  shocked  some  of  his  contemporaries  by  his  belief 
in  the  real  existence  of  the  antipodes,  to  such  an  extent 
that  many  thought  he  should  be  censured  by  the  Pope 
for  an  opinion  which  involved  the  existence  of  a  whole 
"  world  of  human  beings  out  of  reach  of  the  conditions 
of  salvation." 

And  finally  we  all  know  the  tribulations  of  Columbus 
on  this  point  far  down  in  the  fifteenth  century,  at  the 
very  beginning  of  the  Renaissance. 

Now  this  infirmity  of  mind  is,  as  I  have  said,  not  dis- 
tinctive of  the  Greek.  To  me  it  seems  simply  a  natural 
incident  of  the  youth  of  reason,  of  the  childhood  of  per- 
sonality.    At  any  rate,  for  a  dozen  centuries  and  more 


138  The  English  Novel 

after  Aristotle's  death,  to  study  science  means  to  study 
Aristotle ;  in  vain  do  we  hear  Roger  Bacon  in  the  thir- 
teenth century  —  that  prophet-philosopher  who  first 
announces  the  two  rallying  cries  of  modern  science, 
mathematics  and  experiment  —  in  vain  do  we  hear 
Roger  Bacon  crying :  "  If  I  had  power  over  the  works 
of  Aristotle  I  would  have  them  all  burnt ;  for  it  is  only 
a  loss  of  time,  a  course  of  error,  and  a  multiplication  of 
ignorance  beyond  expression,  to  study  in  them." 

Various  attempts  have  been  made  to  account  for  the 
complete  failure  of  Greek  physical  science  by  assigning 
this  and  that  specific  tendency  to  the  Greek  mind  :  but 
it  seems  a  perfect  confirmation  of  the  view  I  have  here 
presented  —  to  wit  that  the  organic  error  was  not  Greek 
but  simply  a  part  of  the  general  human  lack  of  person- 
ality—  to  reflect  that  for  1,500  years  after  Aristotle 
things  are  little  better,  and  that  when  we  do  come  to  a 
time  when  physical  science  begins  to  be  pursued  upon 
progressive  principles,  we  find  it  to  be  also  a  time  when 
all  other  departments  of  activity  begin  to  be  similarly 
pursued,  so  that  we  are  obliged  to  recognize  not  the  cor- 
rection of  any  specific  error  in  Greek  ratiocination,  but 
a  general  advance  of  the  spirit  of  man  along  the  whole 
line. 

And  perhaps  we  have  now  sufficiently  prepared  our- 
selves, as  was  proposed  at  the  outset  of  this  sketch  of 
Greek  science,  to  measure  precisely  the  height  of  the 
new  plane  which  begins  with  Copernicus,  Kepler  and 
Galileo  in  the  sixteenth  century,  over  the  old  plane 
which  ended  with  Aristotle  and  his  commentators.  Per- 
haps the  true  point  up  to  which  we  should  lay  our  line  in 
making  this  measurement  is  not  to  be  found  until  we 
pass  nearly  through  the  seventeenth  century  and  arrive 
fairly  at  Sir  Isaac  Newton.     For  while  each  one  of  the 


The  Development  of  Personality      139 

great  men  who  preceded  him  had  made  his  contribution 
weighty  enough,  as  such,  yet  each  brings  with  him  some 
old  darkness  out  of  the  antique  period. 

When  we  come  to  examine  Copernicus  we  find  that 
though  the  root  of  the  matter  is  there,  a  palpable  envi- 
ronment of  the  old  cycle  and  epicycle  still  hampers 
it ;  Galileo  disappoints  us  at  various  emergencies ;  Kepler 
puts  forth  his  sublime  laws  amid  a  cluster  of  startling 
absurdities;  Francis  Bacon  is  on  the  whole  unfruitful; 
Descartes  will  have  his  vortices  or  eddies  as  the  true 
principles  of  motion  of  the  heavenly  bodies ;  and  so  it 
is  not  until  we  reach  Sir  Isaac  Newton  at  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century  that  we  find  a  large,  quiet,  wholesome 
thinker,  de-Aristotleized,  de-Ptolemized,  de-Cartesianized, 
pacing  forth  upon  the  domain  of  reason  as  if  it  were  his 
own  orchard,  and  seating  himself  in  the  centre  of  the 
universe  as  if  it  were  his  own  easy  chair,  observing  the 
fact  and  inferring  the  law  as  if  with  a  personal  passion 
for  truth  and  a  personal  religion  towards  order.  In 
short,  and  in  terms  of  our  present  theory,  with  Sir  Isaac 
Newton  the  growth  of  man's  personality  has  reached  a 
point  when  it  has  developed  a  true  personal  relation 
between  man  and  nature. 

Let  us  now  sum  these  matters.  Up  to  the  time  of 
Newton  one  seems  to  find  everywhere  some  chilly  trace 
of  the  old  inexorable  pre-Promethean  enmity  of  nature 
towards  man.  Even  from  out  the  ancient  Titanic  times 
of  geologic  convulsion  —  times  of  upheaval,  of  flood,  of 
the  grind  of  glaciers,  —  times  when  nature  as  if  in  a 
nightmare  swarms  with  the  great  Saurians  and  grotesque 
forms  that  make  terrible  the  air  and  the  oozy  earth,  — 
times  of  huge-backed  monsters,  "  isles  of  living  scale," 
looming  up  in  the  swash  of  muddy  waves,  —  times  that 
have  filled  the  crust  of  the  earth  with  bones,  the  rem- 


i40  The  English  Novel 

nants  and  reminders  of  death,  —  times  which  seem  to 
have  somehow  crept  into  the  memory  of  man  to  appear 
in  those  wars  of  the  Titans  of  which  Prometheus  told  us, 
or  in  the  visions  of  griffins  and  monsters  which  haunt 
the  human  imagination,  —  or  perhaps  in  the  marsh- 
monsters,  Grendel  and  his  mother,  of  our  own  old 
Beowulf  epic,  —  even  from  out  these  times  a  vast  cone 
of  shadow  seems  to  project  itself  and  to  extend  far 
beyond  the  time  when  nature's  mood  itself  has  become 
more  gentle,  when  instead  of  the  ptero-dactyl  she  gives 
us  the  antelope,  and  instead  of  tree-fern  and  club-moss 
she  gives  us  the  lily  and  the  rose.  It  seems  part  of  the 
chill  operations  of  this  shadow  that  the  Greek  cannot 
go  directly  to  his  vine,  his  mountain,  his  stream,  his 
tree,  but  can  approach  these  only  through  the  inter- 
mediary Bassarid,  the  Oread,  the  Hamadryad,  the 
Nymph.  It  is  as  if,  in  the  absence  of  Prometheus, 
some  one  must  still  stand  between  man  and  this  old 
inimical  nature  which  for  so  many  centuries  has  frozen 
him  with  her  snows,  burned  him  with  her  heats,  and 
racked  him  with  her  hungers :  hence.  Faun,  Nymph, 
Hamadryad.  I  have  fancied,  too,  that  the  same  stem 
note  is  to  be  found  in  the  very  highest  antique  moral 
conceptions.  When  Plato  is  developing  the  monstrous 
doctrines  which  we  have  seen  concerning  marriage,  &c., 
he  is  doing  so  from  the  purest  religious  motives.  His 
loftiest  ideal  of  the  moral  order  of  the  universe  is  con- 
tained in  the  principle  of  justice ;  and  he  believes  that 
he  is  forwarding  this  ideal  by  those  arrangements.  But 
it  is  only  in  the  growth  of  modem  personality  that  we 
find  a  far  more  beautiful  ideal  of  the  order  of  things. 
This  ideal  is  love.  Compare  the  Promethean  punish- 
ments, compare  the  inexorable  marriage  laws  of  Plato  — 
all  in  the  interests  of  justice  —  with  the  principle  under- 


The  Development  of  Personality      141 

lying  that  adorable  sonnet  No.  116  of  Shakspere's  in 
which  he  really  sets  forth  the  doctrines  of  mercy,  of 
charity,  of  love  which  must  now  forever  supersede  the 
reign  of  justice. 

CXVI. 

**  Let  me  not  to  the  marriage  of  true  minds 
Admit  impediments.    Love  is  not  love 
Which  alters  when  it  alteration  finds. 
Or  bends  with  the  remover  to  remove  : 
O  no ;  it  is  an  ever-fixed  mark, 
That  looks  on  tempests  and  is  never  shaken ; 
It  is  the  star  to  every  wandering  bark, 
Whose  worth's  unknown  although  his  height  be  taken. 
Love's  not  Time's  fool,  though  rosy  lips  and  cheeks 
Within  his  bending  sickle's  compass  come ; 
Love  alters  not  with  his  brief  hours  and  weeks, 
But  bears  it  out  even  to  the  edge  of  doom. 

If  this  be  error,  and  upon  me  prov'd, 

I  never  writ  nor  no  man  ever  lov'd." 

Now  this  feeling  of  love  towards  man  has  become 
really  possible  as  towards  inanimate  nature ;  the  modern 
personality  can  love  nature  directly  as  a  man  loves  his 
friend ;  when  this  love  formulates  itself  in  observing  the 
facts  of  nature,  classifying  them,  we  have  a  Newton,  a 
Darwin ;  when  it  expresses  itself  in  reproducing  nature  in 
beautiful  forms  we  have  the  modern  school  of  landscape- 
painting,  the  modem  nature-poetry,  the  modem  elab- 
orate description  of  natural  scenes  in  the  novel  and  the 
like. 

I  should  have  been  glad  if  the  scope  of  this  part  of 
my  inquiry  had  allowed  me  to  give  some  sketch  at  least 
of  the  special  workers  in  science  who  immediately  pre- 
ceded Newton,  and  some  of  whose  lives  were  most 
pathetic  and  beautiful  illustrations  of  this  personal  love 
for  nature  which  I  have  tried  to  show  as  now  coming 


142  The  English  Novel 

into  being  for  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  man. 
Besides  such  spectacles  as  the  lonesome  researches  of 
Jeremiah  Horrox,  for  example,  I  scarcely  know  anything 
in  history  which  yields  such  odd  and  instructive  con- 
trasts as  those  glimpses  of  the  scientific  work  which  went 
on  about  the  court  of  Charles  II,  and  of  what  seems  to 
have  been  the  genuine  interest  of  the  monarch  himself, 
in  Pepys's  Diary.  For  instance,  under  date  of  May  i  ith, 
1663,  I  find  the  entry :  "  Went  home  after  a  little  dis- 
course with  Mr.  Pierce  the  surgeon  who  tells  me  that 
...  the  other  day  Dr.  Clarke  and  he  did  dissect 
two  bodies,  a  man  and  a  woman,  before  the  king,  with 
which  the  king  was  highly  pleased."  Again,  February 
ist  of  the  next  year:  "Thence  to  Whitehall,  where  in 
the  Duke's  chamber  the  King  come  and  stayed  an  hour 
or  two,  laughing  at  Sir  W.  Petty  .  .  .  and  at  Gresham 
College  in  general :  Gresham  College  he  mightily 
laughed  at  for  spending  time  only  in  weighing  of  air 
and  doing  nothing  else  since  they  sat."  On  the  4th  he 
was  at  St.  Paul's  school  and  "  Dr.  Wilkins  "  is  one  of 
the  "  posers,"  Dr.  Wilkins  being  Jonn  Wilkins,  Bishop  of 
Chester,  whose  name  was  well-known  in  mathematics 
and  in  physics.  Under  date  of  March  ist,  same  year, 
the  entry  is :  "  To  Gresham  College  where  Mr.  Hooke 
read  a  second  very  curious  lecture  about  the  late  comet ; 
among  other  things  proving  very  probably  that  this  is 
the  very  same  comet  that  appeared  before  in  the  year 
1 6 18,  and  that  in  such  a  time  probably  it  will  appear 
again,  which  is  a  very  new  opinion ;  but  all  will  be  in 
print."  And  again  on  the  8th  of  August,  1666,  1  find 
an  entry  which  is  of  considerable  interest :  "  Discoursed 
with  Mr.  Hooke  about  the  nature  of  sounds,  and  he  did 
make  me  understand  the  nature  of  musical  sounds  made 
by  strings   mighty   prettily;  and   told  me   that  having 


The  Development  of  Personality      143 

come  to  a  certain  number  of  vibrations  proper  to  make 
any  tone,  he  is  able  to  tell  how  many  strokes  a  fly  makes 
with  her  wings  (those  flies  that  hum  in  their  flying)  by 
the  note  that  it  answers  to  in  music  during  their  flying. 
That  I  suppose  is  a  httle  too  much  refined ;  but  his  dis- 
course in  general  of  sound  was  mighty  fine." 

On  the  other  hand,  I  scarcely  know  how  I  could  show 
the  newness  of  this  science  thus  entering  the  world  more 
vividly  than  by  recording  two  other  entries  which  I  find 
in  the  midst  of  these  scientific  notes.  One  of  these 
records  a  charm  for  a  burn,  which  Pepys  thought  so 
useful  as  to  preserve.  This  is,  in  case  one  should  be 
burned,  to  say  immediately  the  following  verse : 

"There  came  three  angels  out  of  the  East; 
One  brought  fire,  the  other  brought  frost  — 
Out  fire,  in  frost. 
In  the  name  of  the  Father,  Son  and  Holy  Ghost.** 

And  the  other  is,  under  Sept.  29th,  1662,  "To  the 
King's  Theatre  where  we  saw  *  Midsummer's  Night's 
Dream,'  which  I  had  never  seen  before,  nor  shall  ever 
again,  for  it  is  the  most  insipid,  ridiculous  play  that  ever 
I  saw  in  my  life." 

Indeed,  if  you  should  wish  to  see  how  recently  we  are 
out  of  the  range  of  Aristotle  you  have  only  to  read  the 
chapter  on  Human  Anatomy  which  occurs  in  the  early 
part  of  dear  old  Robert  Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy, 
Here  is  an  account  of  the  body  which  makes  curious 
reading  for  the  modern  biologist.  I  give  a  line  here  and 
there.  The  body  is  divided  into  parts  containing  or  con- 
tained, and  the  parts  contained  are  either  humors  or 
spirits.  Of  these  humors  there  are  four:  to  wit,  first, 
blood,  next,  phlegm,  third,  choler,  and  fourth,  melan- 
choly j  and  this  is  part  of  the  description  of  each. 


144  ^^^  English  Novel 

"Blood  is  a  hot,  sweet,  temperate,  red  humor,  .  .  . 
made  of  the  most  temperate  parts  of  the  chylus  in  the 
liver.  .  .  .  And  from  it  spirits  are  first  begotten  in  the 
heart.  Phlegm  is  a  cold  and  moist  humor,  begotten  of 
the  colder  part  of  the  chylus  in  the  liver.  Choler  is  hot 
and  dry,  begotten  of  the  hotter  parts  of  the  chylus. 
Melancholy,  cold  and  dry,  ...  is  a  bridle  to  the  other 
two  hot  humors,  blood  and  choler.  These  four  humors 
have  some  analogy  with  the  four  elements  and  to  the 
four  ages  in  man."  Having  disposed  thus  of  humors, 
we  have  this  account  of  spirit  or  the  other  contained 
part  of  the  body.  "  Spirit  is  a  most  subtle  vapor  which 
is  expressed  from  the  blood  and  the  instrument  of  the 
soul  to  perform  all  his  actions ;  a  common  tie  or  medium 
between  the  body  and  the  soul,  as  some  will  have  it ;  or 
as  Paracelsus  —  a  fourth  soul  of  itself."  Proceeding  to 
other  parts  of  the  body,  here  are  the  lungs.  "  The  lungs 
is  a  thin  spongy  part  like  an  ox-hoof.  .  .  .  The  instru- 
ment of  voice ;  .  .  .  and  next  to  the  heart  to  express 
their  thoughts  by  voice.  That  it  is  the  instrument  of 
voice  is  manifest  in  that  no  creature  can  speak  .  .  . 
which  wanteth  these  lights.  It  is  besides  the  instrument 
of  breathing ;  and  its  office  is  to  cool  the  heart  by  send- 
ing air  into  it  by  the  venosal  artery,"  &c.,  &c. 

This  anatomy  of  Burton's  includes  the  soul,  and  here 
are  some  particulars  of  it.  "  According  to  Aristotle  the 
soul  is  defined  to  be  entelecheia,  ...  the  perfection  or 
first  act  of  an  organical  body  having  power  of  life.  .  .  . 
But  many  doubts  arise  about  the  essence,  subject,  seat, 
distinction  and  subordinate  faculties  of  it.  .  .  .  Some 
make  one  soul ;  .  .  .  others,  three.  .  .  .  The  common 
division  of  the  soul  is  into  three  principal  faculties  — 
vegetal,  sensible  and  rational."  The  soul  of  man  includes 
all  three ;  for  the  "  sensible  includes  vegetal  and  rational 


The  Development  of  Personality      145 

both  ;  which  are  contained  in  it  (saith  Aristotle)  ut  trigo* 
nus  in  ietragono,  as  a  triangle  in  a  quadrangle.  .  .  .  Para- 
celsus will  have  four  souls,  adding  to  the  three  grand 
faculties  a  spiritual  soul :  which  opinion  of  his  Campa- 
nella  in  his  book  De  Sensu  Rerum  much  labors  to  demon- 
strate and  prove,  because  carcases  bleed  at  the  sight 
of  the  murderer ;  with  many  such  arguments."  These 
are  not  the  wanderings  of  ignorance ;  they  represent  the 
whole  of  human  knowledge  and  are  an  epitome  made 
up  from  Aristotle,  Galen,  Vesalius,  Fallopius,  Laurentius, 
Wecker,  Melanchthon,  Feruclius,  Cicero,  Pico  Mirandola, 
Paracelsus,  Campanella,  Taurellus,  Philip,  Flavius,  Mac- 
robius,  Alhazen  the  Arabian,  Vittellio,  Roger  Bacon, 
Battista  Porta,  Cardan,  Sambucus,  Pliny,  Avicenna, 
Lucretius,  and  such  another  list  as  makes  one  weary 
with  the  very  names  of  authorities. 

These  details  of  antique  science  brought  face  to  face 
with  the  weighing  of  air  at  Gresham  College  and  with 
Sir  Isaac  Newton,  represent  with  sufficient  sharpness  the 
change  from  the  old  reign  of  enmity  between  Nature  and 
man,  from  the  stern  ideal  of  justice,  to  the  later  reign  of 
love  which  embraces  in  one  direction  God,  in  another, 
fellow- man,  in  another,  physical  nature. 

Now  in  these  same  sixteenth,  seventeenth  and  eigh- 
teenth centuries  in  which  we  have  seen  science  recov- 
ering itself  after  having  been  so  long  tongue-tied  by 
authority,  a  remarkably  similar  process  goes  on  in  the  art 
of  music.  If,  as  we  did  in  considering  the  progress  of 
science,  we  now  place  ourselves  at  a  standpoint  from 
which  we  can  precisely  estimate  that  extension  of  man's 
personal  relation  towards  the  unknown  during  these 
centuries,  which  resulted  in  modern  music,  we  are  met 
with  a  chain  of  strikingly  similar  facts  and  causes.  The 
Greek    music  quite   parallels  Greek  physical    science. 

10 


146  The  English  Novel 

We  have  seen  how,  in  the  latter,  a  Greek  philosophef 
would  start  off  with  a  well- sounding  proposition  that 
all  things  originated  in  moisture  or  in  fire  or  in  air;  and 
we  have  seen  how,  instead  of  attacking  moisture,  fire 
and  air,  and  of  observing  and  classifying  all  the  physical 
facts  connected  with  them,  the  philosopher  after  awhile 
presents  us  with  an  amazing  superstructure  of  pure  spec- 
ulation wholly  disconnected  from  facts  of  any  kind, 
physical  or  otherwise.  Greek  music  offers  us  precisely 
the  same  net  outcome.  It  was  enthusiastically  studied, 
there  were  multitudes  of  performers  upon  the  lyre,  the 
flute,  and  so  on,  it  was  a  part  of  common  education, 
and  the  loftiest  souls  exerted  their  loftiest  powers  in 
theorizing  upon  it.  Thus,  in  Plato's  Republic  Socrates 
earnestly  condemns  every  innovation  upon  music.  His 
words  are :  "  For  any  musical  innovation  is  full  of 
danger  to  the  State.  .  .  .  Damon  tells  me,  and  I  can 
quite  believe  him  .  .  .  that  when  modes  of  music 
change,  the  fundamental  laws  of  the  State  always  change 
with  them;"  ...  (therefore)  "our  guardians  must  lay 
the  foundations  of  their  fortress  in  music."  Again,  in 
Book  III,  during  a  discussion  as  to  the  kind  of  music 
to  be  permitted  in  our  Republic,  we  have  this  kind  of 
talk.  Socrates  asks  :  "  Which  are  the  harmonies  expres- 
sive of  sorrow?"  It  is  replied,  they  are  "the  mixed 
Lydian,  and  the  full-toned  or  bass  Lydian." 

"These  must  be  banished.  .  .  .  Which  are  the  soft 
or  drinking  harmonies?  " 

"  The  Ionian  and  the  Lydian." 

These  it  appears  must  also  be  banished. 

"  Then  the  Dorian  and  the  Phrygian  appear  to  be  the 
only  ones  which  remain." 

Socrates  "  answered  :  of  the  harmonies  I  know  noth- 
ing,  but  I  want  to  have  one  warlike  which  will  sound 


The  Development  of  Personality      147 

the  word  or  note  which  a  brave  man  utters  in  the  hour 
of  danger  or  stern  resolve,  or  when  his  cause  is  failing 
.  .  .  (and  he)  meets  fortune  with  calmness  and  endur- 
ance ;  and  another  to  be  used  by  him  in  times  of  peace 
and  freedom  of  action.  .  .  .  These  two  harmonies  I 
ask  you  to  leave :  the  strain  of  necessity  and  the  strain 
of  freedom,  the  strain  of  the  unfortunate  and  the  strain 
of  the  fortunate,  the  strain  of  courage  and  the  strain  of 
temperance ;  these,  I  say,  leave." 

Simmias  draws  a  charming  analogy  in  the  Phcedo 
between  the  relation  of  a  beautiful  and  divine  harmony 
to  the  lyre,  and  that  of  the  soul  to  the  body ;  Pythagoras 
dreams  upon  the  music  of  the  spheres ;  everywhere 
the  Greek  is  occupied  with  music,  practical  and  theoreti- 
cal. I  find  a  lively  picture  of  the  times  where  in  Book 
VII  of  the  Republic  Socrates  describes  the  activity  of 
the  musical  searchers :  "  By  heaven,"  he  says,  "  'tis  as 
good  as  a  play  to  hear  them  talking  about  their  con- 
densed notes,  as  they  call  them ;  they  put  their  ears 
alongside  of  their  neighbors  .  .  .  one  set  of  them 
declaring  that  they  catch  an  intermediate  note  and  have 
found  the  least  interval  which  should  be  the  unit  of 
measurement;  the  others  maintaining  the  opposite 
theory,  that  the  two  sounds  have  passed  into  the  same, 
each  party  setting  their  ears  before  their  understanding." 

And  in  this  last  clause  we  have  a  perfectly  explicit 
statement  of  that  lack  of  personal  relation  to  facts  which 
makes  Greek  music  as  meagre  as  Greek  science.  We 
found  it  the  common  fault  of  Greek  scientific  thought 
that  it  took  more  satisfaction  in  an  ingenious  argument 
upon  a  pseudo-fact  than  in  a  solid  conclusion  based 
upon  plain  observation  and  reasoning.  So  here,  Socrates 
is  satirizing  even  the  poor  attempt  at  observation  made 
by  these  people,  knd  sardonically  accuses  them  of  what 


148  The  English  Novel 

!s  the  very  pride  of  modem  science  —  namely,  of  setting 
their  ears  before  their  understanding,  —  that  is,  of  rigor- 
ously observing  the  facts  before  reasoning  upon  them. 

At  any  rate,  in  spite  of  all  this  beautiful  and  compre- 
hensive talk  of  harmony  and  the  like,  the  fact  is  clear 
that  the  Greek  had  no  harmony  worth  the  name;  he 
knew  nothing  but  the  crude  concords  of  the  octave,  the 
fourth  and  the  fifth ;  moreover,  his  melody  was  equally 
meagre ;  and  altogether  his  ultimate  flight  in  music  was 
where  voices  of  men  and  women  sang,  accompanied  in 
unison  or  octave  by  the  lyre,  the  flute  and  the  like. 

And  if  we  consider  the  state  of  music  after  the  passing 
away  of  the  Greek  cultus  up  to  the  fifteenth  century  we 
have  much  the  same  story  to  tell  as  was  just  now  told  of 
mediaeval  science.  For  a  time  the  world's  stock  of  tunes 
is  practically  comprised  in  the  melodies  collected  by 
Gregory,  known  as  the  Gregorian  Chant.  Presently  the 
system  of  polyphonic  music  arises  in  which  several 
voices  sing  diflerent  melodies  so  arranged  as  not  to  jar 
with  each  other.  But  when  we  now  come  down  to  the 
sixteenth  century  we  find  a  wonderful  new  activity  in 
music  accompanying  that  in  science.  Luther  in  Ger- 
many, Gondimel  in  France,  push  forward  the  song :  in 
Spain,  Salinas  of  Salamanca  studies  ancient  music  for 
thirty  years,  and  finally  arrives  at  the  conclusion  that  the 
Greek  had  no  instrumental  music  and  that  all  their 
melody  was  originally  derived  from  the  order  of  syllables 
in  verse.  In  Italy,  Monteverde  announces  what  were 
called  his  "new  discords,"  and  the  beautiful  maestro 
Palestrina  writes  compositions  in  several  parts,  which 
are  at  once  noble,  simple  and  devout.  England  at  this 
time  is  filled  with  music,  and  by  the  end  of  the  sixteenth 
century  the  whole  land  is  a-warble  with  the  madrigals 
and  part-compositions  of  Weelkes,  Wilbye,  John  Milton 


The  Development  of  Personality      149 

Sr.,  and  the  famous  Dr.  John  Bull,  together  with  those 
of  Tye,  Tallis,  Morley,  Orlando  Gibbons,  and  hundreds 
more.  But  as  yet  modem  music  is  not.  There  is  no 
orchestra;  Queen  Elizabeth's  dinner- music  is  mainly 
drums  and  trumpets.  It  is  not  until  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century  that  Jenkins  and  Purcell  begin  to 
write  sonatas  for  a  small  number  of  violins  with  organ 
accompaniment. 

A  curious  note  of  the  tendency  towards  instrumental 
music  at  this  time,  however,  is  found  in  the  fact  that 
people  begin  to  care  so  little  for  the  words  of  songs  as 
to  prefer  them  in  a  foreign  language.  Henry  Lawes,  one 
of  the  most  famous  musicians  of  the  middle  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  he  who  suggested  Milton's  Comus  and  set 
it  to  music,  endeavored  to  rebuke  this  affectation,  as  he 
supposed  it,  by  a  cruel  joke  :  he  wrote  a  song,  of  which 
the  words  were  nothing  more  than  the  index  of  an  old 
volume  of  musical  compositions,  and  had  it  sung  amidst 
great  applause.  It  must  have  been  in  the  same  course 
of  feeling  that  Waller  —  several  of  whose  poems  had 
been  set  to  music  by  Lawes  —  addressed  to  him  the 
following  stanza : 

"  Let  those  who  only  warble  long 
And  gargle  in  their  throats  a  song 
Content  themselves  with  do,  re,  mi ; 
Let  words  of  sense  be  set  by  thee." 

And  so  through  Allegri,  Stradella,  the  Scarlattis  and  a 
thousand  singers,  players  and  composers  we  come  to  the 
year  1685  in  which  both  Bach  and  Handel  were  bom. 
Here  we  are  fairly  in  the  face  of  modern  music.  What 
then  is  modem  music?  Music  at  this  time  bounds  for- 
ward in  the  joy  of  an  infinitely  developable  principle. 
What  is  this  principle?  In  its  last  analysis  it  is  what 
has  now  come  to  be  called  Harmony,  or  more  specially 


150  The  English  Novel 

Tonality.  According  to  the  modern  musical  feeling 
when  any  tone  is  heard  it  is  heard  in  its  relation  to  some 
other  tone  which  from  one  circumstance  or  another  may 
have  been  taken  as  a  basis  of  such  relations.  By  a  long 
course  of  putting  our  ears  before  our  understanding  — 
a  course  carried  on  by  all  those  early  musicians  whose 
names  I  have  mentioned,  each  contributing  some  new 
relation  between  tones  which  his  ear  had  discovered  — 
we  have  finally  been  able  to  generalize  these  relations  in 
such  a  way  as  to  make  a  complete  system  of  tonality, 
in  which  every  possible  tone  brings  to  our  ear  an  impres- 
sion dependent  on  the  tone  or  tones  in  connection 
with  which  it  is  heard.  As  the  Pupil  at  Sais  ere  long 
began  to  see  nothing  alone,  so  we  hear  nothing  alone. 
You  have  only  to  remember  that  the  singer  nowadays 
must  always  have  the  piano  accompaniment  in  order  to 
satisfy  our  demand  for  harmony,  that  we  never  hear  any 
unmixed  melody  in  set  music,  in  order  to  see  how  com- 
pletely harmony  reigns  in  our  music  instead  of  bare 
melody.  We  may  then  broadly  differentiate  the  modern 
music  which  begins  at  the  same  time  with  modern  science 
from  all  precedent  music  as  Harmony  contrasted  with 
Melody.  To  this  we  must  add  the  idea  of  instrumental 
harmony,  —  of  that  vast  extension  of  harmonies  rendered 
possible  by  the  great  development  of  orchestral  instru- 
ments whose  compass  greatly  exceeds  that  of  the  human 
voice,  which  formerly  limited  all  musical  energy. 

It  is  tempting,  here,  to  push  the  theory  of  personality 
into  fanciful  extremes.  You  have  seen  how  the  long 
development  of  melody  —  melody  being  here  the  individ- 
ual —  receives  a  great  extension  in  the  polyphonic  music, 
where  individual  melodies  move  along  side  by  side 
without  jostling :  and  how  at  length  the  whole  suddenly 
bursts  into  the  highest  type  of  social  development,  where 
the  melody  is  at  once  united  with  the  harmony  in  the 


The  Development  of  Personality      151 

most  intimate  way,  yet  never  loses  its  individuality ;  where 
the  melody  would  seem  to  maintain  towards  the  harmony 
almost  the  ideal  relation  of  our  finite  personality  to  the 
Infinite  personality,  at  once  autonomous  as  finite,  and 
yet  contained  in,  and  rapturously  united  with  the  infinite. 

But  without  pressing  the  matter,  it  now  seems  clear 
from  our  sketch  that  just  as  in  the  seventeenth  century  the 
spirit  of  man  has  opened  up  for  the  first  time  a  perfectly 
clear  and  personal  relation  with  physical  nature,  and  has 
thus  achieved  modern  science  with  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  so 
in  this  same  century,  the  spirit  of  man  opens  up  a  new 
relation  to  the  infinite,  to  the  unknown,  and  achieves 
modem  music,  in  John  Sebastian  Bach.  Nor  need  I 
waste  time  in  defending  this  category  in  which  I  placed 
music,  as  a  relation  to  the  Unknown.  If  you  collect  all 
the  expressions  of  poets  and  philosophers  upon  music, 
you  will  find  them  converging  upon  this  idea.  No  one 
will  think  Thomas  Carlyle  sentimental :  yet  it  is  he  who 
says  "  music  which  leads  us  to  the  verge  of  the  infinite, 
and  lets  us  gaze  on  that." 

And  so  finally,  with  the  first  English  novel  of  Rich- 
ardson in  1739-40,  we  have  completed  our  glance  at  the 
simultaneous  birth  of  modern  science,  modern  music, 
and  the  modern  novel. 

And  we  are  now  prepared  to  carry  forward  our  third 
and  fourth  lines  of  thought  together :  which  were  to 
show  the  development  of  the  novel  from  the  Greek 
Drama,  and  to  illustrate  the  whole  of  the  principles  now 
advanced  with  some  special  studies  of  the  modern  novel. 
These  two  lines  will  mutually  support  each  other,  and 
will  emerge  concurrently,  as  we  now  go  on  to  study  the 
life  and  works  of  that  George  Eliot  who  has  so  recently 
solved  the  scientific  problem  which  made  her  life  one  of 
the  most  pathetic  and  instructive  in  human  history. 


152  The  English  Novel 


VII 


Our  custom,  in  these  studies,  of  passing  at  the  earliest 
possible  moment  from  the  abstract  to  the  concrete,  and 
of  verifying  theory  by  actual  experiment,  arrives  at  a  sort 
of  beautiful  climax  and  apotheosis  as  we  proceed  from 
the  abstract  principles  formulated  in  the  last  six  lectures 
to  their  exquisite  concrete  and  verification  in  George 
Eliot. 

At  our  last  meeting  we  saw  that  during  a  period  of 
time  which  we  fix  to  a  point  by  sweeping  the  mind  from 
the  sixteenth  century  to  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth,  the 
growing  personaHty  of  man  sent  out  three  new  processes 
which  have  remarkably  changed  and  enlarged  the  whole 
form  of  our  individual  and  social  structure. 

I  have  found  it  highly  useful  in  more  than  one  con- 
nection to  acquire  a  clear  notion  of  these  three  processes 
by  referring  them  all  to  a  common  physical  concept  of 
direction.  For  instance :  we  may  with  profit  construct 
a  diagram  in  which  it  shall  appear  that  at  the  Renaissance 
period  mentioned  the  three  great  and  distinctive  new 
personal  relations  which  man  established  for  himself 
were  (i)  a  relation  upward, 

Unknown  (Music) 

A 
Personality ^>-    Fellow-man.     (The  Novel) 

Nature.     (Physical  Science.) 
towards  the  Unknown,  (2)  a  relation  on  our  own  level,  a 


The  Development  of  Personality      153 

relation  towards  our  equal,  —  that  is,  towards  our  fellow- 
man,  and  (3)  a  relation  towards  our  inferior,  —  in  the 
sense  that  the  world  is  for  man's  use,  is  made  for  man, — 
that  is,  towards  physical  nature.  We  have  seen  how 
from  the  beginning  of  man's  history  these  three  relations 
did  not  acquire  the  vividness  and  energy  of  personal 
relations,  nor  any  fixed  or  developable  existence  at  all, 
until  the  period  mentioned. 

I  cannot  help  expressing  earnest  regret  that  the  limits 
of  my  present  subject  have  not  allowed  me  to  give  any 
development  whatever  to  this  conception  of  the  actual 
significance  of  the  Renaissance  as  a  significance  which, 
crystallizing  into  Music,  the  Novel  and  Science,  has  left 
us  those  as  the  solid  residuum  of  that  movement ;  and  it 
is  not  a  mere  sentimental  generalization  but  a  hard, 
scientific  and  unifiable  fact  that  music  is  the  distinctive 
form  in  which  man's  new  relation  to  what  is  above  him 
has  expressed  itself,  the  novel  is  the  distinctive  form  in 
which  man's  new  personal  relation  to  his  fellow-man  has 
expressed  itself,  and  science  is  the  distinctive  form  in 
which  man's  new  personal  relation  to  nature  has  expressed 
itself. 

I  am  perfectly  well  aware  that  when  one  thinks  of  the 
Italian  Opera  with  its  banalities  and  fleshly  frenzies ;  or 
when  one  thinks  of  the  small,  low,  unmanly,  sensual  lives 
which  so  many  musicians  have  led  under  our  eyes : 
one  may  well  feel  inclined  to  dispute  this  category 
to  which  I  have  assigned  music,  and  to  question 
whether  music  does  belong  to  this  wholly  religious 
sphere.  I  long  to  be  able  to  remind  such  questioners  of 
the  historic  fact  that  music  has  been  brought  into  the 
church  as  the  mouthpiece  of  our  worship  not  by  the  sen- 
timental people  but  by  the  sternest  reformers  and  the 
most  untheoretical  and  hard-handed  workers  :  I  long  to 


1^4  The  English  Novel 

remind  them  how  it  is  the  same  Luther  who  would  meet 
his  accusers  though  ten  thousand  devils  backed  them, 
that  cares  most  assiduously  for  the  hymns  of  the  church, 
makes  them,  sings  them  :  how  it  is  the  same  Puritan  who 
fights  winter  and  hunger  and  the  savage,  that  is  noted 
for  his  sweet  songs  and  must  have  his  periodic  opening 
of  the  musical  avenue  up  towards  the  great  God :  or, 
passing  far  back  to  the  times  before  music  was  music, 
and  so  making  the  case  stronger,  I  long  to  remind  them 
of  a  single  line  in  a  letter  from  Pliny  the  younger  to 
Trajan  in  the  year  no,  which  puts  before  me  a  dewy 
morning-picture  of  music  and  Christian  devotion  that 
haunts  my  imagination  —  a  line  in  which  Pliny  mentions 
some  people  who  were  in  the  habit  of  "  meeting  on  a 
certain  day  before  daylight  and  singing  a  hymn  to  Christ 
as  to  a  God  "  :  or  how  in  the  fourth  century  the  very 
Ambrosian  chant  which  preceded  the  Gregorian  chant  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  the  good  Ambrose,  Bishop  of  Milan, 
casting  about  for  solace,  collects  a  number  of  psalm  tunes 
and  hymns  and  appoints  them  to  be  sung  for  the  express 
purpose  of  consoling  his  people  in  their  afflictions ;  and 
coming  down  to  the  birth  of  modern  music,  I  long  to 
remind  these  questioners  of  the  noble  and  simple  devout- 
ness  which  Palestrina  brings  into  the  church  worship 
with  his  music,  of  the  perfect  calm  creative  life  of  John 
Sebastian  Bach  whose  music  is  so  compact  of  devotion 
as  to  have  inspired  the  well-known  declaration  that 
wherever  it  is  played,  it  makes  that  place  a  church ;  and 
finally,  I  long  to  remind  them  how  essential  a  part  of 
every  modem  church  the  organ-loft  and  the  choir  have 
come  to  be,  and  in  full  view  of  the  terrible  mistakes  which 
these  often  make,  of  the  screechy  Italian  opera  music 
which  one  hears  floating  from  this  or  that  church  on  a 
Sunday,  of  the  wholly  undevout  organ  music  with  which 


The  Development  of  Personality      155 

the  unfortunate  flippant- minded  organist  often  sends  us 
forth,  —  to  declare  that  music  is  yet,  as  we  have  seen,  a 
new  art,  that  we  have  not  really  learned  the  uses  of  it, 
much  less  the  scope  of  it,  that  indeed  not  all  of  us  have 
even  yet  acquired  the  physical  capacity  or  ear  for  it,  — 
and  that,  finally,  we  are  at  the  very  threshold  of  those 
sweet  applications  we  may  hereafter  make  of  that  awful 
and  mysterious  power  in  music  to  take  up  our  yearnings 
towards  the  infinite,  at  the  point  where  words  and  all 
articulate  utterance  fail,  and  bear  them  onward  often  to 
something  like  a  satisfactory  nearness  to  their  divine 
object. 

But  all  this  must  be  left  aside,  and  we  must  now  pass 
on  to  consider  that  remarkable  writer  who  for  something 
more  than  twenty  years  past  has  been  chaining  the  atten- 
tion of  our  English  world  purely  by  virtue  of  her  extra- 
ordinary endowment  as  to  all  three  of  these  relations 
which  I  have  here  sketched  in  diagram  —  these  relations 
of  the  growing  personality  of  man  to  that  which  is  above 
him,  or  the  unknown,  — to  that  which  is  on  his  level,  or 
his  fellow-man,  —  and  to  that  which  is  beneath  him,  or 
nature,  —  which  have  resulted  respectively  in  music,  the 
novel,  and  science. 

If  I  could  be  allowed  to  construct  a  final  text  and 
sweet  summary  of  all  the  principles  which  have  been 
announced  in  the  preceding  lectures,  I  could  make  none 
more  complete  than  is  furnished  me  by  two  English 
women  who  have  recently  been  among  us,  and  who,  in 
the  quietest  way  have  each  made  an  epoch,  not  only  in 
literature,  but  in  life.  These  two  women  are  Elizabeth 
Barrett  Browning  and  George  Eliot ;  and  although  our 
studies  now  lie  more  immediately  with  the  latter,  I  shall 
find  a  frequent  delight  as  we  go  on  in  comparing  her 
printed  words  with  those  of  Mrs.  Browning,  and  in  show- 


156  The  English  Novel 

ing  through  what  diverse  forms  of  personality  —  so  diverse 
as  to  be  often  really  complementary  to  each  other  — 
these  two  have  illustrated  the  doctrines  I  have  hitherto 
expounded. 

In  beginning  to  get  some  clear  view  of  the  actual  living 
personality  which  I  have  hitherto  designated  as  George 
Eliot,  one  is  immediately  struck  with  the  fact  that  it  has 
enjoyed  more  of  what  Jack  Falstaff  would  call  a  com- 
modity of  good  names  than  falls  to  the  lot  of  most  mor- 
tals. As  one  rehearses  these  names  it  is  curious  also  to 
reflect  what  a  different  train  of  associations  each  one 
suggests.  It  is  hard  to  believe  that  Marian  Evans,  Amos 
Barton  (for  when  the  editor  of  Blackwood' s  was  corres- 
ponding with  her  about  her  first  unsigned  manuscript, 
which  was  entitled  The  Sad  Fortunes  of  the  Rev.  Amos 
Barton^  I  find  him  addressing  her  as  "  My  dear  Amos  "), 
George  Eliot,  Mrs.  Lewes,  and  Mrs.  Cross  are  one  and 
the  same  person.  Amid  all  these  appellations  I  find 
myself  most  strongly  attracted  towards  that  of  George 
Eliot.  This  was  the  name  which  she  chose  for  herself,  it 
was  under  this  name  that  she  made  her  great  successes, 
it  was  by  this  name  that  she  endeared  herself  to  all  who 
love  great  and  faithful  work ;  and  surely  —  if  one  may 
paraphrase  Poe  —  the  angels  call  her  George  Eliot. 
Since  therefore  we  are  mainly  interested  in  Marian 
Evans,  or  Mrs.  Lewes,  or  Mrs.  Cross,  just  in  so  far  as 
they  bear  intimate  relations  to  George  Eliot,  I  find  my- 
self drawn,  in  placing  before  you  such  sketch  as  I  have 
been  able  to  make  of  this  remarkable  personage,  to  begin 
with  some  account  of  the  birth  of  the  specific  George 
Eliot,  and  having  acquired  a  view  of  the  circumstances 
attending  that  event,  to  look  backward  and  forward  from 
that  as  a  central  point  at  the  origin  and  life  of  Marian 
Evans  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  Mrs.  Lewes  and  Mrs. 
Cross  on  the  other. 


The  Development  of  Personality      157 

On  a  certain  night  in  the  autumn  of  1856  the  editor 
of  Blackwood's  Magazine  was  seated  in  an  apartment 
of  his  own  house  reading  a  manuscript  which  he  had 
lately  received  from  London,  called  The  Sad  Fortunes  oj 
the  Rev.  Amos  Barton,  About  1 1  o'clock  in  the  evening 
Thackeray,  who  had  been  staying  with  him  and  had  been 
out  to  dinner,  entered  the  room,  and  the  editor  remarked, 
"  Do  you  know  I  think  I  have  lighted  upon  a  new  author 
who  is  uncommonly  like  a  first-class  passenger?  " 

Hereupon  he  read  to  Thackeray  a  passage  from  the 
manuscript  which  he  held  in  his  hand.  We  are  able  to 
identify  this  passage,  and  it  seems  interesting  to  repro- 
duce it  here,  not  only  as  a  specimen  of  the  kind  of 
matter  which  was  particularly  striking  to  the  editor  of  a 
great  magazine  twenty-five  years  ago,  but  as  about  the 
first  tangible  utterance  of  the  real  George  Eliot.  The 
passage  occurs  early  in  the  second  chapter  of  the  story. 
In  the  first  chapter  we  have  had  some  description  of  the 
old  church  and  the  existing  society  in  Shepperton 
"twenty-five  years  ago,"  which  dating  from  1856  would 
show  us  that  village  about  the  year  1830-31.  In  the 
second  chapter  we  are  immediately  introduced  to  the 
Rev.  Amos  Barton,  and  the  page  or  two  which  our 
editor  read  to  Thackeray  was  this  : 

Look  at  him  as  he  winds  through  the  little  churchyard  ! 
The  silver  light  that  falls  aslant  on  church  and  tomb,  enables 
you  to  see  his  slim  black  figure,  made  all  the  slimmer  by  tight 
pantaloons.  He  walks  with  a  quick  step,  and  is  now  rapping 
with  sharp  decision  at  the  vicarage  door.  It  is  opened  with- 
out delay  by  the  nurse,  cook,  and  housemaid,  all  at  once,  — 
that  is  to  say,  by  the  robust  maid-of-all  work,  Nanny ;  and  as 
Mr.  Barton  hangs  up  his  hat  in  the  passage,  you  see  that  a 
narrow  face  of  no  particular  complexion,  —  even  the  small- 
pox that  has  attacked  it  seems  to  have  been  of  a  mongrel, 


158  The  English  Novel 

an  eye  of  no  particular  expression,  is  surmounted  by  a  slope 
of  baldness  gently  rising  from  brow  to  crown.  You  judge 
him,  rightly,  to  be  about  forty.  The  house  is  quiet,  for  it  is 
half-past  ten,  and  the  children  have  long  been  gone  to  bed. 
He  opens  the  sitting-room  door;  but  instead  of  seeing  his 
wife,  as  he  expected,  stitching  with  the  nimblest  of  fingers 
by  the  light  of  one  candle,  he  finds  her  dispensing  with  the 
light  of  a  candle  altogether.  She  is  softly  pacing  up  and 
down  by  the  red  fire-light,  holding  in  her  arms  little  Walter, 
the  year-old  baby,  who  looks  over  her  shoulder  with  large 
wide-open  eyes,  while  the  patient  mother  pats  his  back  with 
her  soft  hand,  and  glances  with  a  sigh  at  the  heap  of  large 
and  small  stockings  lying  unmended  on  the  table. 

She  was  a  lovely  woman,  —  Mrs.  Amos  Barton  ;  a  large, 
fair,  gentle  Madonna,  with  thick,  close  chestnut  curls  beside 
her  well  rounded  cheeks,  and  with  large,  tender,  short-sighted 
eyes.  The  flowing  lines  of  her  tall  figure  made  the  limpest 
dress  look  graceful,  and  her  old  frayed  black  silk  seemed  to 
repose  on  her  bust  and  limbs  with  a  placid  elegance  and 
sense  of  distinction,  in  strong  contrast  with  the  uneasy  sense 
of  being  no  fit,  that  seemed  to  express  itself  in  the  rustling 
of  Mrs.  Farquhar's  gros  de  Naples.  The  caps  she  wore 
would  have  been  pronounced,  when  off  her  head,  utterly 
heavy  and  hideous, — for  in  those  days  even  fashionable 
caps  were  large  and  floppy ;  but  surmounting  her  long, 
arched  neck,  and  mingling  their  borders  of  cheap  lace  and 
ribbon  with  her  chestnut  curls,  they  seemed  miracles  of  suc- 
cessful millinery.  Among  strangers  she  was  shy  and  tremu- 
lous as  a  girl  of  fifteen  ;  she  blushed  crimson  if  any  one 
appealed  to  her  opinion  ;  yet  that  tall,  graceful,  substantial 
presence  was  so  imposing  in  its  mildness  that  men  spoke  to 
her  with  an  agreeable  sensation  of  timidity.  ...  I  venture  to 
say,  Mrs.  Barton  would  never  have  grown  half  so  angelic  if 
she  had  married  the  man  you  would  perhaps  have  had  in 
your  eye  for  her,  —  a  man  with  sufficient  income  and  abun- 
dant personal  ^clat.  Besides,  Amos  was  an  affectionate 
husband,  and,  in  his  way  valued  his  wife  as  his  best 
treasure. 


The  Development  of  Personality      159 

**  I  wish  we  could  do  without  borrowing  money,  and  yet 
I  don't  see  how  we  can.  Poor  Fred  must  have  some  new 
shoes;  I  couldn't  let  him  go  to  Mrs.  Bond's  yesterday 
because  his  toes  were  peeping  out,  dear  child !  and  I  can't 
let  him  walk  anywhere  except  in  the  garden.  He  must  have 
a  pair  before  Sunday.  Really,  boots  and  shoes  are  the 
greatest  trouble  of  my  life.  Everything  else  one  can  turn 
and  turn  about,  and  make  old  look  like  new ;  but  there's  no 
coaxing  boots  and  shoes  to  look  better  than  they  are." 

Mrs.  Barton  was  playfully  undervaluing  her  skill  in  meta- 
morphosing boots  and  shoes.  She  had  at  that  moment  on  her 
feet  a  pair  of  slippers  which  had  long  ago  lived  through  the 
prunella  phase  of  their  existence,  and  were  now  running  a 
respectable  career  as  black  silk  slippers,  having  been  neatly 
covered  with  that  material  by  Mrs.  Barton's  own  neat  fin- 
gers. Wonderful  fingers  those  !  they  were  never  empty ;  for 
if  she  went  to  spend  a  few  hours  with  a  friendly  parishioner, 
out  came  her  thimble  and  a  piece  of  calico  or  muslin,  which 
before  she  left,  had  become  a  mysterious  Httle  garment  with 
all  sorts  of  hemmed  ins  and  outs.  She  was  even  trying  to 
persuade  her  husband  to  leave  off  tight  pantaloons,  because 
if  he  would  wear  the  ordinary  gun-cases,  she  knew  she  could 
make  them  so  well  that  no  one  would  suspect  the  tailor. 

But  by  this  time  Mr.  Barton  has  finished  his  pipe,  the 
candle  begins  to  burn  low,  and  Mrs.  Barton  goes  to  see  if 
Nanny  has  succeeding  in  lulling  Walter  to  sleep.  Nanny  is 
that  moment  putting  him  in  the  little  cot  by  his  mother's 
bedside ;  the  head  with  its  thin  wavelets  of  brown  hair,  in- 
dents the  little  pillow ;  and  a  tiny,  waxen,  dimpled  fist  hides 
the  rosy  hps,  for  baby  is  given  to  the  infantine  peccadillo  of 
thumb-sucking. 

So  Nanny  could  now  join  in  the  short  evening  prayer,  and 
all  go  to  bed. 

Mrs.  Barton  carried  up  stairs  the  remainder  of  her  heap  of 
stockings,  and  laid  them  on  a  table  close  to  her  bedside, 
where  also  she  placed  a  warm  shawl,  removing  her  candle, 
before  she  put  it  out,  to  a  tin  socket  fixed  at  the  head  of  her 
bed.  Her  body  was  very  weary,  but  her  heart  was  not 
heavy,  in  spite  of  Mr.  Woods  the  butcher,  and  the  transitory 


i6o  The  English  Novel 

nature  of  shoe-leather ;  for  her  heart  so  overflowed  with 
love,  she  felt  sure  she  was  near  a  fountain  of  love  that  would 
care  for  her  husband  and  babes  better  than  she  could  foresee ; 
so  she  was  soon  asleep.  But  about  half-past  five  o'clock  in 
the  morning,  if  there  were  any  angels  watching  round  her 
bed,  —  and  angels  might  be  glad  of  such  an  office,  —  they 
saw  Mrs.  Barton  rise  up  quietly,  careful  not  to  disturb  the 
slumbering  Amos,  who  was  snoring  the  snore  of  the  just; 
light  her  candle,  prop  herself  upright  with  the  pillows, 
throw  the  warm  shawl  round  her  shoulders,  and  renew  her 
attack  on  the  heap  of  undarned  stockings.  She  darned 
away  until  she  heard  Nanny  stirring,  and  then  drowsiness 
came  with  the  dawn ;  the  candle  was  put  out,  and  she  sank 
into  a  doze.  But  at  nine  o'clock  she  was  at  the  breakfast- 
table  busy  cutting  bread-and-butter  for  five  hungry  mouths, 
while  Nanny,  baby  on  one  arm,  in  rosy  cheeks,  fat  neck,  and 
night-gown,  brought  in  a  jug  of  hot  milk-and-water. 

Although  Thackeray  was  not  enthusiastic,  the  editor 
maintained  his  opinion  and  wrote  the  author  that  the 
manuscript  was  "  worthy  the  honors  of  print  and  pay," 
addressing  the  author  as  "  My  dear  Amos."  Considera- 
ble correspondence  followed  in  which  the  editor  was  free 
in  venturing  criticisms.  The  author  had  offered  this 
as  the  first  of  a  series  to  be  called  Scenes  of  Clerical 
Life;  but  no  others  of  the  series  were  yet  written  and 
the  editor  was  naturally  desirous  to  see  more  of  them 
before  printing  the  first.  This  appears  to  have  made 
the  author  extremely  timid,  and  for  a  time  there  was 
doubt  whether  it  was  worth  while  to  write  the  remaining 
stories.  For  the  author's  encouragement,  therefore,  it 
was  determined  to  print  the  first  story  without  waiting 
to  see  the  others ;  and  accordingly  in  Blackwood's  Maga- 
zine for  January,  1857,  the  story  of  Amos  Barton  was 
printed.  This  stimulus  appears  to  have  had  its  effect; 
and  after  the  January  number,  each  succeeding  issue  of 


The  Development  of  Personality      i6i 

Blackwood's  Magazine  contained  an  instalment  of  the 
series  known  as  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  until  it  was 
concluded  in  the  number  for  November,  1857,  the  whole 
series  embracing  the  three  stories  of  Ainos  Barton^  Mr. 
Gilfirs  Love-Story  dXiA  Janet' s  Repentance.  It  was  only 
while  the  second  of  these  —  Mr.  GilfiPs  Love-Story — was 
appearing  in  the  Magazine  that  our  George  Eliot  was 
born  j  for  it  was  at  this  time  that  the  editor  of  the  Maga- 
zine was  instructed  to  call  the  author  by  that  name. 

The  hold  which  these  three  stories  immediately  took 
upon  all  thinking  people  was  most  remarkable.  In  Jan- 
uary, 1858  —  that  is,  two  months  after  the  last  instalment 
oi  Janet 's  Repentance  —  I  find  Charles  Dickens  writing 
this  letter ; 

"  My  dear  Longford, — 

"  Will  you  —  by  such  roundabout  ways  and  methods  as 
may  present  themselves  —  convey  this  note  of  thanks  to  the 
author  of  *  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life,'  whose  two  first  stories  I 
can  never  say  enough  of,  I  think  them  so  truly  admirable. 
But,  if  those  two  volumes,  or  a  part  of  them,  were  not  written 
by  a  woman  —  then  should  I  begin  to  believe  that  I  am  a 
woman  myself. 

"  Faithfully  yours  always, 

"Charles  Dickens." 

It  is  especially  notable  to  find  that  the  editor  of  the 
Magazine  himself  completely  abandoned  all  those  con- 
servative habits  of  the  prudent  editor  which  have  arisen 
from  a  thousand  experiences  of  the  vapid  failures  of  this 
and  that  new  contributor  who  seemed  at  first  sure  to 
sv/eep  the  world,  and  which  always  teach  every  conduc- 
tor of  a  great  magazine  at  an  early  stage  of  his  career  to 
be  extremely  guarded  in  his  expressions  to  new  writers 
however  promising  they  may  appear.  This  traditional 
guardedness  seems  to  have  been  completely  swept  away 


l6a  The  English  Novel 

by  these  stories ;  Mr.  Blackwood  writes  letter  after  let- 
ter to  George  Eliot,  full  of  expressions  that  the  hack- 
neyed editor  would  ordinarily  consider  extravagant :  and 
finally  in  a  letter  concerning  the  publication  in  book- 
form  of  the  magazine -stories :  "  You  will  recollect  .  .  . 
my  impression  was  that  the  series  had  not  lasted  long 
enough  in  the  Magazine  to  give  you  a  hold  on  the 
general  public,  although  long  enough  to  make  your 
literary  reputation.  Unless  in  exceptional  cases,  a  very 
long  time  often  elapses  between  the  two  stages  of  repu- 
tation —  the  Hterary  and  the  public.  Your  progress  will 
be  sure  J  if  not  so  quick  as  we  could  wish." 

Before  examining  these  stories,  it  seems  a  pleasant 
method  of  pursuing  our  account  of  the  George  Eliot 
thus  introduced  to  go  forward  a  little  to  the  time  when 
a  curious  and  amusing  circumstance  resulted  in  revealing 
her  actual  name  and  sex.  Thus  we  seem  to  be  making 
this  lovely  star  rise  before  us  historically  as  it  rose  before 
the  world.  I  have  just  spoken  of  the  literary  interest 
which  the  stories  excited  in  Mr.  Blackwood :  the  per- 
sonal interest  appears  to  have  been  as  great,  and  he  was 
at  first  very  anxious  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  his  new 
contributor  in  the  flesh.  He  was  given  to  understand, 
however,  that  the  contributor  wished  to  remain  obscure, 
for  the  present,  and  he  forbore  further  inquiries  with 
scrupulous  delicacy.  It  happened,  however,  that  pres- 
ently the  authorship  oi  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  was  claimed 
for  another  person,  and  the  claim  soon  assumed  con- 
siderable proportions.  Certain  residents  about  Nuneaton, 
in  Warwickshire  —  where  in  point  of  fact  George  Eliot 
had  been  born  and  brought  up  —  felt  sure  they  recognized 
in  the  stories  of  Amos  Barton  and  Mr.  Gilfil  portraits  of 
people  who  had  actually  lived  in  that  country,  and  began 
tQ  inquire  what  member  of  their  community  could  have 


The  Development  of  Personality      163 

painted  these  portraits.  Presently,  while  the  stories  were 
running  in  the  magazine,  a  newspaper  published  in  the 
Isle  of  Man  boldly  announced  that  a  certain  Mr.  Liggins 
of  Nuneaton  was  their  author.  The  only  claim  to 
literary  power  Mr.  Liggins  had,  it  seems,  lay  in  the  cir- 
cumstance that  he  had  run  through  a  fortune  at  Cam- 
bridge :  and  in  fact  he  himself  denied  the  charge  at  first. 
But  immediately  upon  the  heels  of  Scenes  of  Clerical 
Life  appeared  Adam  Bede^  and  the  honor  of  that  great 
work  was  so  seductive  that  for  some  reason  or  other  — 
whether  because  the  reiteration  of  his  friends  had  per- 
suaded him  that  he  actually  did  write  the  works,  in  some 
such  way  as  it  is  said  that  a  man  may  tell  a  lie  so  often 
and  long  that  he  will  finally  come  to  believe  it  himself, 
or  for  whatever  other  reason  —  it  seems  that  Mr.  Liggins 
so  far  compromised  himself  that,  without  active  denial 
by  him,  a  friendly  clergyman  down  in  Warwickshire  sent 
a  letter  to  the  Times  formally  announcing  Liggins  as 
the  author  of  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  and  of  Adam  Bede. 
Hereupon  appeared  a  challenge  from  the  still  mythical 
George  Eliot,  inviting  Mr.  Liggins  to  make  a  fair  test 
of  his  capacity  by  writing  a  chapter  or  two  in  the  style 
of  the  disputed  works.  The  Blackwoods  were  thickly 
besieged  with  letters  from  various  persons  earnestly 
assuring  them  that  Liggins  was  the  author.  To  add  to 
the  complications,  it  was  given  out  that  Liggins  was 
poor,  so  that  many  earnest  persons  wrote  to  the  Blaok- 
woods  declaring  that  so  great  a  genius  ought  not  to  be 
hampered  by  want,  and  liberally  offering  their  purses  to 
place  him  in  such  condition  that  he  might  write  without 
being  handicapped  by  care.  It  seems  to  have  been 
particularly  troublesome  to  the  Blackwoods  to  prevent 
money  from  being  misapplied  in  this  way,  —  for  they 
were  satisfied  that  Liggins  was  not  the  author  j  and  they 


164  The  English  Novel 

were  made  all  the  more  careful  by  some  previous  expe 
riences  of  a  similar  kind;  in  one  of  Blackwood's  let- 
ters to  George  Eliot  he  comically  exclaims  that  "  some 
years  ago  a  rascal  nearly  succeeded  in  marrying  a  girl 
with  money  on  the  strength  of  being  the  author  of  a 
series  of  articles  in  the  Magazine." 

Thus  what  with  the  public  controversy  between  the 
Liggins  and  anti-Liggins  parties  —  for  many  persons 
appear  to  have  remained  firmly  persuaded  that  Liggins 
was  the  true  author  —  and  what  with  the  more  legiti- 
mate stimulus  excited  by  the  confirmatory  excellence  of 
Adam  Bede,  the  public  curiosity  was  thoroughly  aroused, 
so  that  even  before  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  appeared  in 
i860  it  had  become  pretty  generally  known  who  "  George 
Eliot "  was. 

Here,  then,  would  seem  to  be  a  fitting  point  for  us 
to  pause  a  moment  and  endeavor  to  construct  for  our- 
selves some  definite  figure  of  the  real  flesh-and- blood 
creature  who,  up  to  this  time,  had  remained  the  mere 
literary  abstraction  called  George  Eliot. 

It  appeared  that  her  real  name  was  Marian  Evans  and 
that  she  was  the  daughter  of  a  respectable  land  surveyor 
who  had  married  and  settled  at  Nuneaton  in  Warwick- 
shire. Here  she  was  born  in  November,  1820;  and  it 
seems  pleasant  to  reflect  that  but  a  few  miles  off  in  the 
same  county  of  Warwick  was  the  birthplace  of  Shak- 
spere,  whose  place  among  male  writers  seems  more 
nearly  filled  by  Marian  Evans  or  George  Eliot  among 
female  writers  than  by  any  other  woman,  so  that  we 
have  the  greatest  English  man  and  the  greatest  English 
woman  bom,  though  two  centuries  and  a  half  apart  in 
time,  but  a  few  miles  apart  in  space. 

Here  among  the  same  thick  hedges  and  green  fields 
of  the  fair  English  Midlands  with  which  Shakspere  was 


The  Development  of  Personality      165 

familiar  Marian  Evans  lived  for  the  first  large  part  of 
her  life.  Perhaps  a  more  quiet,  uneventful  existence  as 
to  external  happenings  could  hardly  be  imagined ;  and 
that  Marian  Evans  was  among  the  quietest  of  the  quiet 
residents  there  seems  cunningly  enough  indicated  if  we 
remember  that  when  the  good  people  of  Nuneaton  first 
began  to  suspect  that  some  resident  of  that  region  had 
been  taking  their  portraits  in  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life 
none  seemed  to  think  for  a  moment  of  a  certain  Marian 
Evans  as  possibly  connected  with  the  matter,  and  popu- 
lar suspicion,  after  canvassing  the  whole  ground,  was 
able  to  find  only  one  person  —  to  wit,  the  Mr.  Liggins 
just  referred  to  —  who  seemed  at  all  competent  to  such 
work. 

Of  these  demure,  reserved,  uneventful  years  of  country 
existence  it  is  of  course  impossible  to  lay  before  you 
any  record  :  no  life  of  George  Eliot  has  yet  been  given 
to  the  public.  Sometime  ago,  however,  I  happened 
upon  a  letter  of  Marian  Evans's  published  in  an  English 
paper,  in  which  she  refers  with  so  much  particularity  to 
this  portion  of  her  life,  that  I  do  not  know  how  we 
could  gain  a  more  vivid  and  authentic  view  thereof  than 
by  quoting  it  here.  Specifically,  the  letter  relates  to  a 
controversy  that  had  sprung  up  as  to  who  was  the 
original  of  the  character  of  Dinah  Morris,  —  that  beauti- 
ful Dinah  Morris  you  will  remember  in  Adam  Bede^ 
—  solemn,  fragile,  strong  Dinah  Morris,  the  woman- 
preacher  whom  I  find  haunting  my  imagination  in 
strange  but  entrancing  unions  of  the  most  diverse  forms, 
as  if,  for  instance,  a  snow-drop  could  also  be  St.  Paul, 
as  if  a  kiss  could  be  a  gospel,  as  if  a  lovely  phrase  of 
Chopin's  most  inward  music  should  become  suddenly 
an  Apocalypse  revealing  us  Christ  in  the  flesh,  —  that 
rare,   pure   and    marvelous    D^'nah   Morris   who   would 


1 66  The  English  Novel 

alone  consecrate  English  literature  if  it  had  yielded  no 
other  gift  to  man.  It  would  seem  that  possibly  a  dim 
suggestion  of  such  a  character  may  have  been  due  to  a 
certain  aunt  of  hers,  Elizabeth  Evans,  whom  Marian  had 
met  in  her  girlhood ;  but  this  suggestion  was  all ;  and 
the  letter  shows  us  clearly  that  the  character  of  Dinah 
Morris  was  almost  an  entire  creation.  The  letter  is  as 
follows : 

Holly  Lodge,  Oct.  7,  1859. 

Dear  Sara,  —  I  should  like,  while  the  subject  is  vividly 
present  with  me,  to  tell  you  more  exactly  than  I  have  ever 
yet  done,  what  I  knew  of  my  aunt,  Elizabeth  Evans.  My 
father,  you  know,  lived  in  Warwickshire  all  my  life  with  him, 
having  finally  left  Staffordshire  first,  and  then  Derbyshire, 
six  or  seven  years  before  he  married  my  mother.  There 
was  hardly  any  intercourse  between  my  father's  family,  resi- 
dent in  Derbyshire  and  Staffordshire,  and  our  family  —  few 
and  far-between  visits  of  (to  my  childish  feelings)  strange 
uncles  and  aunts  and  cousins  from  my  father's  far-off  native 
county,  and  once  a  journey  of  my  own,  as  a  little  child,  with 
my  father  and  mother,  to  see  my  uncle  WiUiam,  a  rich 
builder  in  Staffordshire  —  but  not  my  uncle  and  aunt  Samuel, 
so  far  as  I  can  recall  the  dim  outline  of  things  —  are  what  I 
remember  of  northerly  relations  in  my  childhood. 

But  when  I  was  seventeen  or  more  —  after  my  sister  was 
married  and  I  was  mistress  of  the  house  —  my  father  took  a 
journey  into  Derbyshire,  in  which,  visiting  my  uncle  and 
aunt  Samuel,  who  were  very  poor,  and  lived  in  a  humble 
cottage  at  Wirksworth,  he  found  my  aunt  in  a  very  delicate 
state  of  health  after  a  serious  illness,  and,  to  do  her  bodily 
good,  he  persuaded  her  to  return  with  him,  telling  her  that  I 
should  be  very,  very  happy  to  have  her  with  me  for  a  few 
weeks.  I  was  then  strongly  under  the  influence  of  Evangel- 
ical belief,  and  earnestly  endeavoring  to  shape  this  anoma- 
lous English-Christian  life  of  ours  into  some  consistency 
with  the  spirit  and  simple  verbal  tenor  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment.    I  was  delighted  to  see  my  aunt.     Although  I  had 


The  Development  of  Personality      167 

only  heard  her  spoken  of  as  a  strange  person,  given  to  a 
fanatical  vehemence  of  exhortation  in  private  as  well  as 
public,  I  believed  that  we  should  find  sympathy  between  us. 
She  was  then  an  old  woman  —  above  sixty  —  and,  I  believe, 
had  for  a  good  many  years  given  up  preaching.  A  tiny 
little  woman,  with  bright,  small  dark  eyes,  and  hair  that 
had  been  black,  I  imagine,  but  was  now  gray  —  a  pretty 
woman  in  her  youth,  but  of  a  totally  different  physical  type 
from  Dinah.  The  difference  —  as  you  will  believe  —  was 
not  simply  physical ;  no  difference  is.  She  was  a  woman  of 
strong  natural  excitability,  which, I  know  from  the  description 
I  have  heard  my  father  and  half-sister  give,  prevented  her 
from  the  exercise  of  discretion  under  the  promptings  of  her 
zeal.  But  this  vehemence  was  now  subdued  by  age  and 
sickness;  she  was  very  gentle  and  quiet  in  her  manners  — 
very  loving  —  and  (what  she  must  have  been  from  the  very 
first)  a  truly  religious  soul,  in  whom  the  love  of  God  and 
love  of  man  were  fused  together.  There  was  nothing 
highly  distinctive  in  her  religious  conversation.  I  had  had 
much  intercourse  with  pious  Dissenters  before.  The  only 
freshness  I  found  in  our  talk  came  from  the  fact  that  she  had 
been  the  greater  part  of  her  life  a  Wesleyan,  and  though  she 
left  the  society  when  women  were  no  longer  allowed  to 
preach,  and  joined  the  new  Wesleyans,  she  retained  the 
character  of  thought  that  belongs  to  the  genuine  old  Wes- 
leyan. I  had  never  talked  with  a  Wesleyan  before,  and  we 
used  to  have  little  debates  about  predestination,  for  I  was 
then  a  strong  Calvinist.  Here  her  superiority  came  out, 
and  I  remember  now,  with  loving  admiration,  one  thing 
which  at  the  time  I  disapproved.  It  was  not  strictly  a  con- 
sequence of  her  Arminian  belief,  and  at  first  sight  might 
seem  opposed  to  it,  —  yet  it  came  from  the  spirit  of  love 
which  clings  to  the  bad  logic  of  Arminianism.  When  my 
uncle  came  to  fetch  her,  after  she  had  been  with  us  a  fort- 
night or  three  weeks,  he  was  speaking  of  a  deceased  minis- 
ter, once  greatly  respected,  who  from  the  action  of  trouble 
upon  him  had  taken  to  small  tippling,  though  otherwise  not 
culpable.  "  But  I  hope  the  good  man's  in  heaven  for  all 
that,"  said  my  uncle.     "  Oh,  yes,"  said  my  aunt,  with  a  deep 


1 68  The  English  Novel 

inward  groan  of  joyful  conviction,  "  Mr.  A.'s  in  heaven  — 
that's  sure."  This  was  at  the  time  an  offence  to  my  stern, 
ascetic,  hard  views  —  how  beautiful  it  is  to  me  now ! 

As  to  my  aunt's  conversation,  it  is  a  fact  that  the  only  two 
things  of  any  interest  I  remember  in  our  lonely  sittings  and 
walks  are  her  telling  me  one  sunny  afternoon  how  she  had, 
with  another  pious  woman,  visited  an  unhappy  girl  in  prison, 
stayed  with  her  all  night,  and  gone  with  her  to  execution ; 
and  one  or  two  accounts  of  supposed  miracles  in  which  she 
believed  —  among  the  rest,  the  face  with  the  crown  of  thorns 
seen  in  the  glass.  In  her  account  of  the  prison  scenes,  I 
remember  no  word  she  uttered  —  I  only  remember  her  tone 
and  manner,  and  the  deep  feeling  I  had  under  the  recital. 
Of  the  girl  she  knew  nothing,  I  believe  —  or  told  me  nothing 
—  but  that  she  was  a  common  coarse  girl,  convicted  of  child- 
murder.  The  incident  lay  in  my  mind  for  years  on  years,  as 
a  dead  germ,  apparently  —  till  time  had  made  my  mind  a 
nidus  in  which  it  could  fructify;  it  then  turned  out  to  be  the 
germ  of  "  Adam  Bede." 

I  saw  my  aunt  twice  after  this.  Once  I  spent  a  day  and 
night  with  my  father  in  the  Wirksworth  cottage,  sleeping 
with  my  aunt,  I  remember.  Our  interview  was  less  interest- 
ing than  in  the  former  time :  I  think  I  was  less  simply  devoted 
to  religious  ideas.  And  once  again  she  came  with  my  uncle 
to  see  me  —  when  father  and  I  were  living  at  Foleshill ;  then 
there  was  some  pain,  for  I  had  given  up  the  form  of  Christian 
belief,  and  was  in  a  crude  state  of  free-thinking.  She  stayed 
about  three  or  four  days,  I  think.  This  is  all  I  remember 
distinctly,  as  matter  I  could  write  down,  of  my  dear  aunt, 
whom  I  really  loved.  You  see  how  she  suggested  Dinah ; 
but  it  is  not  possible  you  should  see  as  I  do  how  entirely 
her  individuality  differed  from  Dinah's.  How  curious  it 
seemed  to  me  that  people  should  think  Dinah's  sermon, 
prayers  and  speeches  were  copied  —  when  they  were  written 
with  hot  tears,  as  they  surged  up  in  my  own  mind  ! 

As  to  my  indebtedness  to  facts  of  local  and  personal  his- 
tory of  a  small  kind,  connected  with  Staffordshire  and  Derby- 
shire —  you  may  imagine  of  what  kind  that  is  when  I  tell  you 
that  I  never  remained  in  either  of  those  counties  more  than 


The  Development  of  Personality      169 

a  few  days  together,  and  of  only  two  such  visits  have  I  more 
than  a  shadowy,  interrupted  recollection.  The  details  which 
I  knew  as  facts,  and  have  made  use  of  for  my  picture,  were 
gathered  from  such  imperfect  allusion  and  narrative  as  I 
heard  from  my  father  in  his  occasional  talk  about  old  times. 

As  to  my  aunt's  children  or  grandchildren  saying,  if  they 
did  say,  that  Dinah  is  a  good  portrait  of  my  aunt  —  that  is  the 
vague,  easily  satisfied  notion  imperfectly  instructed  people 
always  have  of  portraits.  It  is  not  surprising  that  simple 
men  and  women  without  pretension  to  enlightened  discrim- 
ination should  think  a  generic  resemblance  constitutes  a 
portrait,  when  we  see  the  great  public  so  accustomed  to  be 
delighted  with  misrepresentations  of  life  and  character,  which 
they  accept  as  representations,  that  they  are  scandalized 
when  art  makes  a  nearer  approach  to  truth. 

Perhaps  I  am  doing  a  superfluous  thing  in  writing  all  this 
to  you  —  but  I  am  prompted  to  do  it  by  the  feeling  that  in 
future  years  "  Adam  Bede  "  and  all  that  concerns  it  may 
have  become  a  dim  portion  of  the  past,  and  I  may  not  be 
able  to  recall  so  much  of  the  truth  as  I  have  now  told  you. 
Once  more,  thanks,  dear  Sara. 

Ever  your  loving 

Marian. 

It  is  easy  to  gather  from  this  letter  that  whilst  the 
existence  of  Marian  Evans  was  calm  enough  externally 
her  inner  life  was  full  of  stirring  events  —  of  the  most 
stirring  events,  in  fact,  which  can  agitate  the  human  soul : 
for  it  is  evident  that  she  had  passed  along  some  quite 
opposite  phases  of  religious  belief.  In  185 1,  after  a  visit 
to  the  Continent,  she  goes  —  where  all  English  writers 
seem  to  drift  by  some  natural  magic  —  to  London  and 
fixes  her  residence  there.  It  is  curious  enough  that  with 
all  her  clearness  of  judgment  she  works  here  for  five 
years,  apparently  without  having  perceived  the  vocation 
for  which  her  whole  natural  and  acquired  outfit  had  so 
remarkably    prepared    her.      We   find   her   translating 


lyo  The  English  Novel 

Spinoza's  Ethics ;  not  only  translating  but  publishing 
Feuerbach's  Essence  of  Christianity  and  Strauss' s  Life  of 
Jesus.  She  contributes  learned  essays  to  The  Westminster 
Review  ;  it  is  not  until  the  year  1856,  when  she  is  thirty- 
six  years  old,  that  her  first  slight  magazine  story  is  sent 
to  Blackwood ;  and  even  after  his  first  commendations 
her  timidity  and  uncertainty  as  to  whether  she  could 
succeed  in  story-writing  are  so  great  that  she  almost 
resolved  to  give  it  up.  I  should  regard  it  as  mournful,  if 
I  could  think  it  religious  to  regard  anything  as  mournful 
which  has  happened  and  is  not  revocable,  that  upon 
coming  to  London  Marian  Evans  fell  among  a  group  of 
persons  represented  by  George  Henry  Lewes.  If  one 
could  have  been  her  spiritual  physician  at  this  time  one 
certainly  would  have  prescribed  for  her  some  of  those 
warm  influences  which  dissipate  doubt  by  exposing  it  to 
the  fierce  elemental  heats  of  love,  of  active  charity. 
One  would  have  prescribed  for  her  the  very  remedy  she 
herself  has  so  wisely  commended  in  Jane  fs  Repentance, 

"  No  wonder  the  sick  room  and  the  lazaretto  have  so  often 
been  a  refuge  from  the  tossings  of  intellectual  doubt,  —  a 
place  of  repose  for  the  worn  and  wounded  spirit.  Here  is  a 
duty  about  which  all  creeds  and  philosophers  are  at  one ; 
here,  at  least,  the  conscience  will  not  be  dogged  by  doubt,  the 
benign  impulse  will  not  be  checked  by  adverse  theory ;  here 
you  may  begin  to  act  without  settling  one  preliminary  ques- 
tion. To  moisten  the  sufferer's  parched  lips  through  the 
long  night-watches,  to  bear  up  the  drooping  head,  to  lift  the 
helpless  limbs,  to  divine  the  want  that  can  find  no  utterance 
beyond  the  feeble  motion  of  the  hand  or  beseeching  glance 
of  the  eye,  —  these  are  offices  that  demand  no  self-question- 
ings, no  casuistry,  no  assent  to  propositions,  no  weighing  of 
consequences.  Within  the  four  walls  where  the  stare  and 
glare  of  the  world  are  shut  out,  and  every  voice  is  subdued,  — 
where  a  human  being  lies  prostrate,  thrown  on  the  tender 


The  Development  of  Personality      171 

mercies  of  his  fellow,  the  moral  relation  of  man  to  man  is 
reduced  to  its  utmost  clearness  and  simplicity ;  bigotry  can- 
not confuse  it ;  theory  cannot  pervert  it ;  passion,  awed  into 
quiescence,  can  neither  pollute  nor  perturb  it." 

Or  one  might  have  prescribed  for  her  America,  where 
the  knottiest  social  and  moral  problems  disappear  unac- 
countably before  a  certain  new  energy  of  individual 
growth  which  is  continually  conquering  new  points  of 
view  from  which  to  regard  the  world. 

At  the  time  to  which  we  have  now  brought  her  history 
Marian  Evans  would  seem  to  have  been  a  singularly 
engaging  person.  She  was  small  in  stature  and  her  face 
was  what  would  be  called  homely,  here ;  but  she  was  widely 
read,  master  of  several  languages,  a  good  talker  and  lis- 
tener j  and  beyond  all,  every  current  of  testimony  runs 
towards  a  certain  intensity  and  loving  fire  which  pervaded 
her  and  which  endowed  her  with  irresistible  magnetic 
attraction  for  all  sensitive  souls  that  came  near  her.  Her 
love  for  home  matters,  and  for  the  spot  of  earth  where 
she  had  been  born  ;  her  gentle  affection  for  animals  ;  how 
the  Bible  and  Thomas  a  Kempis  were  her  favorite  books  : 
these  and  a  thousand  womanly  traits  I  hope  to  bring  out 
as  we  study  some  of  her  greater  works,  —  for  with  all  her 
reputed  reserve  I  find  scarcely  any  writer  so  sincerely 
communicative  and  so  frankly  desirous  of  sympathy  on 
the  part  of  her  reader  as  George  Eliot.  In  the  next 
lecture  I  shall  ask  leave  to  present  you  with  some  pictures 
of  the  stage  at  which  English  novel-writing  has  arrived 
under  the  recent  hands  of  Scott,  Thackeray  and  Dickens 
when  George  Eliot  is  timidly  offering  her  first  manuscript 
to  Blackwood's ;  and  I  shall  then  offer  some  quotations 
from  these  first  three  stories  —  particularly  iiomjanefs 
Repentance  which  seems  altogether  the  most  important 
of  the  three  —  and  shall  attempt  to  show  distinctly  what 


172  The  English  Novel 

were  the  main  new  features  of  wit,  of  humor,  of  doctrine 
and  of  method  which  were  thus  introduced  into  our  lit- 
erature, especially  in  connection  with  similar  features 
which  about  this  same  time  were  being  imparted  by 
Mrs.  Browning. 

Meantime  let  me  conclude  by  asking  you  to  fix  youi 
attention  for  a  moment  on  this  figure  of  Milly,  sweet 
wife  of  Amos  Barton,  going  to  bed  with  her  unmended 
basket  of  stockings  in  great  fatigue  yet  in  great  love  and 
trust,  and  contrast  it  with  that  figure  of  Prometheus, 
nailed  to  the  Caucasian  rock  in  pain  and  hate,  which 
formed  the  first  object  of  these  studies.  What  a  pro- 
digious spiritual  distance  we  have  swept  over  from  the 
Titan  lying  down  to  unrest,  thundering  defiance  against 
Jove*s  thunder  as  if  clashing  shield  against  shield,  and 
the  tender-limbed  woman  whom  the  simple  narrative 
puts  before  us  in  these  words :  "  Her  body  was  very 
weary,  but  her  heart  was  not  heavy  .  .  . ;  for  her  heart 
so  overflowed  with  love,  she  felt  sure  she  was  near  a 
fountain  of  love  that  would  care  for  her  husband  and 
babes  better  than  she  could  foresee."  Fixing  your 
attention  upon  this  word  "love,"  and  reminding  you 
how,  at  the  close  of  the  last  lecture,  we  found  that  the 
whole  movement  of  the  human  spirit  which  we  have 
traced  here  as  the  growth  of  personality  towards  the 
unknown,  towards  fellow-man,  towards  nature,  —  result- 
ing in  music,  in  the  novel,  in  science  —  that  this  whole 
movement  becomes  a  unity  when  we  arrive  at  the  fact 
that  it  really  imports  a  complete  change  in  man's  most 
ultimate  conception  of  things :  a  change,  namely,  from 
the  conception  of  Justice  as  the  organic  idea  of  moral 
order,  (a  conception  which  we  have  seen  ^Eschylus  and 
Plato  vainly  working  out  to  the  outrageous  conclusions 
of  Prometheus,  of  the  Republic,)  to  the  conception  of 


The  Development  of  Personality      173 

Love  as  the  organic  idea  of  moral  order,  a  conception 
which  we  are  just  now  to  see  George  Eliot  working  out 
to  the  divinely-satisfactory  conclusion  of  Milly  Barton, 
who  conquers  with  gentle  love  a  world  which  proved 
refractory  alike  to  the  justice  of  Jove  and  the  defiance 
of  Prometheus ;  reminding  you,  I  say,  of  this  concurrent 
change  from  feeble  personality  and  justice  to  strong  per- 
sonality and  love,  what  an  amazing  arc  of  progress  we 
have  traversed  in  coming  from  ^schylus  to  George  Eliot ! 

And  it  is,  finally,  most  interesting  to  find  this  change 
receiving  clear  expression  for  the  first  time  in  English 
literature  in  the  works  of  the  two  women  I  have  men- 
tioned, Mrs.  Browning  and  George  Eliot.  In  this  very 
autumn  when  we  have  seen  the  editor  of  Blackwood's 
Magazine  reading  the  MS.  of  George  Eliot's  first  story 
to  Thackeray,  Mrs.  Browning  is  sending  Aurora  Leigh 
to  print ;  and,  as  I  shall  have  frequent  occasion  to  point 
out,  the  burden  of  Aurora  Leigh  as  well  as  of  George 
Eliot's  whole  cyclus  of  characters  is  love,  love,  love. 

There  is  a  charming  scene  in  the  first  act  of  Bayard 
Taylor's  Prince  Deukalion  which,  though  not  extending 
to  the  height  we  have  reached,  yet  very  dramatically 
sums  up  a  great  number  of  ideas  that  converge  towards 
it.  In  this  scene  Gsea,  the  Earth,  mother  of  men,  is 
represented  as  tenderly  meditating  upon  her  son,  man. 
Near  her  stands  a  rose-tree,  from  one  bud  of  which  Love 
is  presently  to  emerge.     She  says  : 

"  I  change  with  man, 
Mother,  not  more  than  partner,  of  his  fate. 
Ere  he  was  born  I  dreamed  that  he  might  be 
And  through  long  ages  of  imperfect  life 
Waited  for  him.     Then,  vexed  with  monstrous  shapes 
That  spawned  and  wallowed  in  primeval  ooze, 
I  lay  supine  and  slept,  or  seemed  to  sleep ; 
And  dreamed,  or  waking  felt  as  in  a  dream. 


174  The  English  Novel 

Some  touch  of  hands,  some  soft  delivering  help. 
And  he  was  there  I     His  faint  new  voice  I  heard ; 
His  eye  that  met  the  sun,  his  upright  tread, 
Thenceforth  were  mine !    And  with  him  came  the  palm. 
The  oak,  the  rose,  the  swan,  the  nightingale : 
The  barren  bough  hung  apples  to  the  sun, 
Dry  stalks  made  harvest :  breezes  in  the  woods 
Then  first  found  music,  and  the  turbid  sea 
First  rolled  a  crystal  breaker  to  the  shore. 
His  foot  was  on  the  mountains,  and  the  wave 
Upheld  him  :  over  all  things  huge  and  coarse 
There  came  the  breathing  of  a  regal  sway, 
Which  bent  them  into  beauty.     Order  new 
Followed  the  march  of  new  necessity. 
And  what  was  useless,  or  unclaimed  before, 
Took  value  from  the  seizure  of  his  hands." 

In  the  midst  of  like  thoughts  a  bud  on  a  rose-tree 
which  stands  by  Gaea  bursts  open,  and  Eros,  the  antique 
god  of  young  love,  appears  from  it. 

"  Lithe,  tricksome  spirit !  art  thou  left  alone 
Of  gods  and  all  their  intermediate  kin 
The  sweet  survivor  ?    Yet  a  single  seed, 
When  soil  and  seasons  lend  their  alchemy, 
May  clothe  a  barren  continent  in  green." 

EROS. 

**  Was  I  born,  that  I  should  die  ? 
Stars  that  fringe  the  outer  sky 
Know  me  :  yonder  sun  were  dim 
Save  my  torch  enkindle  him. 
Then,  when  first  the  primal  pair 
Found  me  in  the  twilight  air, 
I  was  older  than  their  day, 
Yet  to  them  as  young  as  they. 
All  decrees  of  fate  I  spurn ; 
Banishment  is  my  return  ; 
Hate  and  force  purvey  for  me, 
Death  is  shining  victory." 


The  Development  of  Personality      175 


VIII 

If  you  should  be  wandering  meditatively  along  the 
bank  of  some  tiny  brook,  a  brook  so  narrow  that  you  can 
leap  across  it  without  effort,  so  quiet  in  its  singing  that 
its  loudest  tinkle  cannot  be  heard  in  the  next  field,  car- 
rying upon  its  bosom  no  craft  that  would  draw  more 
water  than  the  curving  leaf  of  a  wild-rose  floating  down 
stream,  too  small  in  volume  to  dream  of  a  mill-wheel 
and  turning  nothing  more  practical  than  maybe  a  piece 
of  violet-petal  in  a  little  eddy  off  somewhere,  —  if,  I  say, 
you  should  be  strolling  alongside  such  a  brook  and  should 
see  it  suddenly  expand,  without  the  least  intermediate 
stage,  into  a  mighty  river,  turning  a  thousand  great 
wheels  for  man's  profit  as  it  swept  on  to  the  sea,  and 
offering  broad  highway  and  favorable  currents  to  a  thou- 
sand craft  freighted  with  the  most  precious  cargoes  of 
human  aspiration :  you  would  behold  the  aptest  phys- 
ical semblance  of  that  spiritual  phenomenon  which  we 
witnessed  at  our  last  meeting,  when  in  tracing  the  quiet 
and  mentally-wayward  course  of  demure  Marian  Evans 
among  the  suave  pastorals  of  her  native  Warwickshire,  we 
came  suddenly  upon  the  year  1857  when  her  first  ven- 
ture in  fiction  —  The  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  —  appeared 
in  Blackwood's  Magazine  and  magically  enlarged  the 
stream  of  her  influence  from  the  diameter  of  a  small 
circle  of  literary  people  in  London  to  the  width  of  all 
England. 

At  this  point  it  seems  interesting  now  to  pause  a 
moment,  to  look  about  and  see  exactly  what  network 


176  The  English  Novel 

English  fiction  had  done  since  its  beginning,  only  about 
a  century  before,  to  note  more  particularly  what  were 
the  precise  gains  to  humanity  which  Thackeray  and 
Dickens  had  poured  in  just  at  this  time  of  1857,  and 
thus  to  differentiate  a  clear  view  of  the  actual  contribu- 
tion which  George  Eliot  was  now  beginning  to  make  to 
English  life  and  thought. 

It  is  not  a  pleasant  task,  however  instructive,  to  leave 
off  looking  at  a  rose  and  cast  one's  contemplation  down 
to  the  unsavory  muck  in  which  its  roots  are  imbedded. 
This,  however,  is  what  one  must  do  when  one  passes  from 
the  many-petalled  rose  of  George  Eliot's  fiction  to  the 
beginning  of  the  English  novel. 

This  beginning  was  as  curious  as  it  was  unlooked-for 
by  the  people  engaged  in  it.  In  the  year  1 740  a  book 
in  two  volumes  called  Pamela:  or  Virtue  Rewarded^ 
was  printed,  in  which  Samuel  Richardson  took  what 
seems  to  have  been  the  first  revolutionary  departure  from 
the  wild  and  complex  romances  —  such  as  Sir  Philip 
Sidney's  Arcadia  —  which  had  formed  the  nearest 
approach  to  the  modern  novel  until  then.  At  this  time 
Richardson  was  fifty  years  old,  and  probably  the  last 
man  in  England  who  would  have  been  selected  as  likely 
to  write  an  epoch-making  book  of  any  description.  He 
had  worked  most  of  his  life  as  a  printer,  but  by  the 
time  referred  to  had  gotten  so  far  towards  the  literary 
life  as  to  be  employed  by  booksellers  to  arrange  indexes 
and  to  write  prefaces  and  dedications.  It  so  happened 
that  on  a  certain  occasion  he  was  asked  by  two  book- 
Bellers  to  write  a  volume  of  letters  on  different  subjects 
which  might  serve  as  models  to  uneducated  persons  — a 
port  of  Every  Man  His  Own  Letter  Writer,  or  the  like. 

The  letters,  in  order  to  be  more  useful,  were  to  be  upon 
such  subjects  as  the  rustic  world  might  likely  desire  to 


The  Development  of  Personality      177 

correspond  about.  Richardson  thinks  it  over ;  and  pres- 
ently writes  to  inquire,  "  Will  it  be  any  harm,  in  a  piece 
you  want  to  be  written  so  low,  if  we  should  instruct 
them  how  they  should  think  and  act  in  common  cases, 
as  well  as  indite  ?  "  This  seemed  a  capital  idea  and  in 
the  course  of  time,  after  some  experiments  and  after 
recalling  an  actual  story  he  had  once  heard  which  gave 
him  a  sort  of  basis,  he  takes  for  his  heroine  a  simple 
servant-girl,  daughter  of  Goodman  Andrews,  a  humbly 
bom  English  farmer,  rather  sardonically  names  her 
Pamela  after  the  Lady  Pamela  in  Sir  Philip  Sidney's 
Arcadia^  carries  her  pure  through  a  series  of  incredibly 
villainous  plots  against  her  by  the  master  of  the  house 
where  she  is  at  service,  who  has  taken  advantage  of  the 
recent  death  of  his  wife,  Pamela's  mistress,  to  carry 
these  on,  and  finally  makes  the  master  marry  her  in  a  fit 
of  highly  spasmodic  goodness,  after  a  long  course  of  the 
most  infamous  but  unsuccessful  villainy,  calls  the  book 
Pamela ;  or  Virtue  Rewarded^  prints  it,  and  in  a  very 
short  time  wins  a  great  host  of  admiring  readers,  inso- 
much that  since  the  first  two  volumes  ended  with  the 
marriage,  he  adds  two  more  showing  the  married  life  of 
Pamela  and  her  squire. 

The  whole  novel,  like  all  of  Richardson's,  is  written  in 
the  form  of  letters  passing  between  the  characters.  It 
is  related,  apropos  of  his  genius  in  letter-writing,  that  in 
his  boyhood  he  was  the  love-letter-writer-in-chief  for 
three  of  the  young  ladies  of  his  town,  and  that  he  main- 
tained this  embarrassing  position  for  a  long  time  without 
suspicion  from  either  of  the  three.  Richardson  himself 
announces  the  moral  purpose  of  his  book,  saying  that 
he  thinks  it  might  **  introduce  a  new  species  of  writing 
that  might  possibly  turn  young  people  into  a  course  of 
reading  different  from  the  pomp  and  parade  of  romance- 

12 


178  The  English  Novel 

writing,  and  .  .  .  promote  the  cause  of  religion  and 
virtue ;  "  and  in  the  preface  to  the  continuation  before- 
mentioned  he  remarks  as  follows :  "  The  two  former 
volumes  of  Pamela  met  with  a  success  greatly  exceeding 
the  most  sanguine  expectations ;  and  the  editor  hopes  " 
(Richardson  calls  himself  the  editor  of  the  letters)  "  that 
the  letters  which  compose  these  will  be  found  equally 
written  to  nature ;  avoiding  all  romantic  flights,  improb- 
able surprises,  and  irrational  machinery;  and  that  the 
passions  are  touched  where  requisite ;  and  rules  equally 
new  and  practicable  inculcated  throughout  the  whole 
for  the  general  conduct  of  life."  I  have  given  these 
somewhat  tedious  quotations  from  Richardson's  own 
words  to  show  first  that  the  English  novel  starts  out 
with  a  perfectly  clear  and  conscious  moral  mission,  and 
secondly  to  contrast  this  pleasing  moral  announcement 
of  Richardson's  with  what  I  can  only  call  the  silly  and 
hideous  realization  of  it  which  meets  us  when  we  come 
actually  to  read  this  wonderful  first  English  novel  — 
Pamela. 

I  have  already  given  the  substance  of  the  first  two 
volumes  in  which  the  rich  squire,  Mr.  B.  (as  he  is  called 
throughout  the  novel)  finally  marries  and  takes  home 
the  girl  who  had  been  the  servant  of  his  wife  and  against 
whom,  ever  since  that  lady's  death,  he  had  been  plotting 
with  an  elaborate  baseness  which  has  never  before  been, 
and  I  sincerely  hope  will  never  hereafter  be  described. 
By  this  action  Mr.  B.  has  in  the  opinion  of  Richardson, 
of  his  wife,  the  servant-girl  and  the  whole  contem- 
porary world,  saturated  himself  with  such  a  flame  of 
saintliness  as  to  have  burnt  out  every  particle  of  any 
little  misdemeanor  he  may  have  been  guilty  of  in  his 
previous  existence ;  and  I  need  only  read  you  an  occa- 
sional line  from  the  first  four  letters  of  the  third  volume 


The  Development  of  Personality      179 

in  order  to  show  the  marvelous  sentimentaHty,  the  un- 
truth towards  nature,  and  the  purely  commercial  view  of 
virtue  and  of  religion  which  make  up  this  intolerable 
book.  At  the  opening  of  Volume  III  we  find  that 
Goodman  Andrews,  the  father  of  the  bride,  and  his  wife 
have  been  provided  with  a  comfortable  farm  on  the  estate 
of  Mr.  B.,  and  the  second  letter  is  from  Andrews  to  his 
daughter,  the  happy  bride,  Pamela.  After  rhapsodizing 
for  several  pages  Andrews  reaches  this  climax  —  and  it 
is  worth  while  observing  that  though  only  a  nide  farmer 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  whose  daughter  was  a  servant 
maid,  he  writes  in  the  most  approved  epistolary  style  of 
the  period : 

"  When  here  in  this  happy  dwelling  and  this  well-stocked 
farm,  in  these  rich  meadows  and  well-cropped  acres,  we  look 
around  us  and  whichever  way  we  turn  our  heads  see  bless- 
ings upon  blessings  and  plenty  upon  plenty :  see  barns  well 
stored,  poultry  increasing,  the  kine  lowing  and  crowding 
about  us,  and  all  fruitful ;  and  are  bid  to  call  all  these  our 
own.  And  then  think  that  all  is  the  reward  of  our  child's 
virtue !  O,  my  dear  daughter,  who  can  bear  these  things  ! 
Excuse  me !  I  must  break  off  a  little !  For  my  eyes  are  as 
full  as  my  heart ;  and  I  will  retire  to  bless  God,  and  your 
honored  husband." 

Here  there  is  a  break  in  the  page,  by  which  the  honest 
farmer  is  supposed  to  represent  the  period  of  time  occu- 
pied by  him  in  retiring,  and  dividing  his  blessing,  as  one 
hopes,  impartially,  between  the  Creator  and  Pamela's 
honored  husband,  —  and  the  farmer  resumes  his  writing : 

"  So  —  my  dear  child  —  I  now  again  take  up  my  pen.  But 
reading  what  I  had  written,  in  order  to  carry  on  the  thread, 
I  can  hardly  forbear  again  being  in  like  sort  affected.  —  " 

And  here  we  have  a  full  stop  and  a  dash,  during  which 
it   is   only  fair  to   suppose   that   the   honest   Andrews 


i8o  The  English  Novel 

manages  to  weep  and  bless  up  to  something  like  a  state 
of  repose. 

Presently  Pamela  writes : 

"  My  dear  father  and  mother ;  I  have  shown  your  letter  to 
my  beloved.  .  .  .  '  Dear  good  souls,'  said  he, '  how  does  every- 
thing they  say  and  everything  they  write  manifest  the  worthi- 
ness of  their  hearts !  Tell  them  ...  let  them  find  out 
another  couple  as  worthy  as  themselves  and  I  will  do  as 
much  for  them.  Indeed  I  would  not  place  them,'  continued 
the  dear  obliger,  '  in  the  same  county,  because  I  would  wish 
two  counties  to  be  blessed  for  their  sakes.'  ...  I  could 
only  fly  to  his  generous  bosom  .  .  .  and  with  my  eyes 
swimming  in  tears  of  grateful  joy  .  .  .  bless  God  and  bless 
him  with  my  whole  heart  ;  for  speak  I  could  not !  but  almost 
choaked  with  my  joy,  sobbed  to  him  my  grateful  acknowl- 
edgements. .  .  .  '  'Tis  too  much,  too  much,'  said  I,  in 
broken  accents  :  *  O,  sir,  bless  me  more  gradually  and  more 
cautiously  —  for  I  cannot  bear  it ! '  And  indeed  my  heart 
went  flutter,  flutter,  flutter,  at  his  dear  breast  as  if  it  wanted 
to  break  its  too  narrow  prison  to  mingle  still  more  inti- 
mately with  his  own." 

And  a  few  lines  further  on  we  have  this  purely  com- 
mercial view  of  religion : 

"And  if  our  prayers  shall  be  heard,"  continues  Pamela, 
"  and  we  shall  have  the  pleasure  to  think  that  his  "  (her  hus- 
band's) "  advances  in  piety  are  owing  not  a  little  to  them  ; 
.  .  .  then  indeed  may  we  take  the  pride  to  think  we  have 
repaid  his  goodness  to  us  and  that  we  have  satisfied  the  debt 
which  nothing  less  can  discharge." 

Or  again,  in  the  same  letter  she  exclaims  anew : 

"  See,  O  see,  my  excellent  parents,  how  we  are  crowned 
with  blessings  upon  blessings  until  we  are  the  talk  of  all  who 
know  us ;  you  for  your  honesty,  I  for  my  humility  and  vir- 
tue ; "  so  that  now  I  have  "  nothing  to  do  but  to  reap  all  the 


The  Development  of  Personality      i8i 

rewards  which  this  life  can  afford  ;  and  if  I  walk  humbly  and 
improve  my  blessed  opportunities,  will  heighten  and  perfect 
all,  in  a  still  more  joyful  futurity." 


Perhaps  a  more  downright  creed,  not  only  of  world- 
liness,  but  of  "  other-worldliness,"  was  never  more 
explicitly  avowed. 

Now  —  to  put  the  whole  moral  effect  of  this  book  into 
a  nutshell  —  Richardson  had  gravely  announced  it  as  a 
warning  to  young  servant-girls :  but  why  might  he  not  as 
well  have  announced  it  as  an  encouragement  to  old  vil- 
lains ?  The  virtue  of  Pamela,  it  is  true,  is  duly  rewarded : 
but  Mr.  B.,  with  all  his  villainy,  certainly  fares  better 
than  Pamela :  for  he  not  only  receives  to  himself  a  para- 
gon of  a  wife,  but  the  sole  operation  of  his  previous  vil- 
lainy towards  her  is  to  make  his  neighbors  extol  him  to 
the  skies  as  a  saint,  when  he  turns  from  it;  so  that, 
considering  the  enormous  surplus  of  Mr.  B.'s  rewards  as 
against  Pamela's,  instead  of  the  title  Pamela  :  or  Virtue 
Rewarded^  ought  not  the  book  to  have  been  called  Mr,  B.: 
or  Villainy  Rewarded? 

It  was  expressly  to  ridicule  some  points  of  Richard- 
son's Pamela  that^he  second  English  novel  \vas  written. 
This  was  Henry  Fielding's  Joseph  Andrews,  which 
appeared  in  1742.  It  may  be  that  the  high  birth  of 
Fielding  —  his  father  was  great-grandson  of  the  Earl  of 
Denbigh,  and  a  lieutenant-general  in  the  army  —  had 
something  to  do  with  his  opposition  to  Richardson,  who 
was  the  son  of  a  joiner ;  at  any  rate,  he  puts  forth  a  set  of 
exactly  opposite  characters  to  those  in  Pamela,  takes  a 
footman  for  his  virtuous  hero,  and  the  footman's  mistress 
for  his  villainous  heroine,  names  the  footman  Joseph 
Andrews,  (explaining  that  he  was  the  brother  of  Richard- 
son's Pamela  who  you  remember  was  the  daughter  of 


1 82  The  English  Novel 

Goodman  Andrews)  makes  principal  figures  of  two  parsons 
(Parson  Adams  and  Parson  TruUiber,  the  former  of  whom 
is  set  up  as  a  model  of  clerical  behavior,  and  the  latter  the 
reverse)  and  with  these  main  materials,  together  with  an 
important  pedler,  he  gives  us  the  book  still  called  by 
many  the  greatest  English  novel,  originally  entitled  The 
Adventures  of  Joseph  Andrews  and  His  Frietid  Abraham 
Adams, 

I  will  not,  because  I  cannot,  here  cite  any  of  the  vital 
portions  of  Joseph  Andrews  which  produce  the  real 
moral  effect  of  the  book  upon  a  reader.  I  can  only  say 
that  it  is  not  different  in  essence  from  the  moral  effect  of 
Richardson's  book  just  described,  though  the  tone  is 
more  clownish.  But  for  particular  purposes  of  compari- 
son with  Dickens  and  George  Eliot  hereafter  let  me 
recall  to  you  in  the  briefest  way  two  of  the  funny  scenes. 
To  show  that  these  are  fair  samples  of  the  humorous 
atmosphere  of  the  book  I  may  mention  that  they  are  both 
among  the  number  which  were  selected  by  Thackeray, 
who  was  a  keen  lover  of  Fielding  generally,  and  of  his 
Joseph  Andrews  particularly,  for  his  own  illustrations 
upon  his  own  copy  of  this  book. 

In  the  first  scene  Joseph  Andrews  is  riding  along  the 
road  upon  a  very  unreliable  horse  who  has  already 
given  him  a  lame  leg  by  a  fall,  attended  by  his  friend 
Parson  Adams.  They  arrive  at  an  inn,  dismount,  and 
ask  for  lodging;  the  landlord  is  surly  and  presently 
behaves  uncivilly  to  Joseph  Andrews ;  whereupon  Parson 
Adams,  in  defence  of  his  lame  friend,  knocks  the  land- 
lord sprawling  upon  the  floor  of  his  own  inn;  the 
landlord,  however,  quickly  receives  reinforcements  and 
his  wife,  seizing  a  pan  of  hog's  blood  which  stands  on 
the  dresser,  discharges  it  with  powerful  effect  into 
the  good  parson's  face.      While  the  parson  is  in  this 


The  Development  of  Personality      183 

condition,  enters  Mrs.  Slipshod  —  a  veritable  Grendel's 
mother  — 

"  Terrible  termagant,  mindful  of  mischief," 

and  attacks  the  landlady,  with  fearsome  results  of  up- 
rooted hair  and  defaced  feature.  In  scene  second.  Parson 
Adams  being  in  need  of  a  trifling  loan  goes  to  see  his 
counter-parson  Trulliber,  who  was  noted,  among  other 
things,  for  his  fat  hogs.  Unfortunately  Parson  Adams 
meets  Mrs.  Trulliber  first,  and  is  mistakenly  introduced 
by  her  to  her  husband  as  "  a  man  come  for  some  of  his 
hogs."  Trulliber  immediately  begins  to  brag  of  the  fat- 
ness of  his  swine  and  drags  Parson  Adams  to  his  sty 
insisting  upon  examination  in  proof  of  his  praise.  Par- 
son Adams  complies;  they  reach  the  sty  and  by  way 
of  beginning  his  examination  Parson  Adams  lays  hold 
of  the  tail  of  a  very  high-fed,  capricious  hog ;  the  beast 
suddenly  springs  forward  and  throws  Parson  Adams 
headlong  into  the  deep  mire.  Trulliber  bursts  into 
laughter  and  contemptuously  cries :  "  Why,  dost  not 
know  how  to  handle  a  hog?  " 

It  is  impossible  for  lack  of  space  to  linger  over  further 
characteristics  of  these  writers.  In  1 748  appears  Rich- 
ardson's Clarissa  Harlowe  in  eight  volumes,  which  from 
your  present  lecturer's  point  of  view  is  quite  sufficiently 
described  as  a  patient  analysis  of  the  most  intolerable 
crime  in  all  history  or  fiction,  watered  with  an  amount  of 
tears  and  sensibility  as  much  greater  than  that  in  Pamela 
as  the  cube  of  eight  volumes  is  greater  than  the  cube  of 
four  volumes. 

In  1753  Richardson's  third  and  last  novel.  Sir  Charles 
Grandison,  appeared ;  a  work  differing  in  motive,  but 
not  in  moral  tone,  from  the  other  two,  though  certainly 
less  hideous  than  Clarissa  Harlowe. 


184  The  English  Novel 

Returning  to  bring  up  Fielding's  novels,  in  1743  ap- 
peared his  History  of  the  Life  of  the  late  Mr.  Jonathan 
Wild  the  Greaty  in  which  the  hero  Jonathan  Wild  was  a 
taker  of  thieves,  or  detective,  who  ended  his  own  career 
by  being  hanged  ;  the  book  being  written  professedly  as 
"  an  exposition  of  the  motives  that  actuate  the  unprinci- 
pled great,  in  every  walk  and  sphere  of  life,  and  which 
are  common  alike  to  the  thief  or  murderer  on  the  small 
scale  and  to  the  mighty  villain  and  reckless  conqueror 
who  invades  the  rights  or  destroys  the  liberties  of  na- 
tions." In  1749  Fielding  prints  his  Tom  Jones,  vfhich. 
some  consider  his  greatest  book.  The  glory  of  Tom 
Jones  is  Squire  Allworthy,  whom  we  are  invited  to  re- 
gard as  the  most  miraculous  product  of  the  divine  crea- 
tion so  far  in  the  shape  of  man;  but  to  your  present 
lecturer's  way  of  thinking  the  kind  of  virtue  represented 
by  Squire  Allworthy  is  completely  summed  in  the  fol- 
lowing sentence  of  the  work  introducing  him  in  the 
midst  of  nature.  It  is  a  May  morning,  and  Squire  All- 
worthy  is  pacing  the  terrace  in  front  of  his  mansion 
before  sunrise;  "when,"  says  Fielding,  "in  the  full  blaze 
of  his  majesty  up  rose  the  sun,  than  which  one  object 
alone  in  this  lower  creation  could  be  more  glorious,  and 
that  Mr.  Allworthy  himself  presented  —  a  human  being 
replete  with  benevolence  meditating  in  what  manner  he 
might  render  himself  most  acceptable  to  his  Creator  by 
doing  most  good  to  his  creatures  :  "  that  is,  in  plain  com- 
mercial terms,  how  he  might  obtain  the  largest  possible 
amount  upon  the  letter  of  credit  which  he  found  himself 
forced  to  buy  against  the  inevitable  journey  into  those 
foreign  parts  lying  beyond  the  waters  of  death. 

Out  of  Fielding's  numerous  other  writings,  dramatic 
and  periodical,  it  is  perhaps  necessary  to  mention  farther 
only  his  Amelia,  belonging  to  the  year  1 75 1,  in  which  he 
praised  his  first  wife  and  satirized  the  jails  of  his  time. 


The  Development  of  Personality     185 

We  must  now  hastily  pass  to  the  third  so-called  classic 
writer  in  English  fiction,  Tobias  Smollett,  who,  after 
being  educated  as  a  siu-geon,  and  having  experiences  of 
life  as  surgeon's  mate  on  a  ship  of  the  line  in  the  expedi- 
tion to  Carthagena,  spent  some  time  in  the  West  Indies, 
returned  to  London,  wrote  some  satires,  an  opera,  &c., 
and  presently  when  he  was  still  only  twenty-seven  years 
old  captivated  England  with  his  first  novel,  Roderick 
Random^  which  appeared  in  1748,  the  same  year  with 
Clarissa  Hariowe.  In  1751  came  '^moWtti'?,  Peregrine 
Pickle,  famous  for  its  bright  fun  and  the  caricature  it 
contains  of  Akenside — Pleasures  of  Imagination  Aken- 
side — who  is  represented  as  the  host  in  a  very  absurd  en- 
tertainment after  the  ancient  fashion.  In  1 7  5  2  Smollett's 
Adventures  of  Ferdinand  Count  Fathom  gave  the  world  a 
new  and  very  complete  study  in  human  depravity.  In 
1769,  appeared  his  Adventures  of  an  Atom:  a  theme 
which  one  might  suppose  it  difficult  to  make  indecorous 
and  which  was  really  a  political  satire;  but  the  unfor- 
tunate liberty  of  locating  his  atom  as  an  organic  particle 
in  various  parts  of  various  successive  human  bodies  gave 
Smollett  a  field  for  indecency  which  he  cultivated  to  its 
utmost  yield.  A  few  months  before  his  death  in  1771 
appeared  his  Expedition  of  Humphrey  Clinker,  certainly 
his  best  novel.  It  is  worth  while  noticing  that  in  Hum- 
phrey Clinker  the  veritable  British  poorly-educated  and 
poor-speUing  woman  begins  to  express  herself  in  the 
actual  dialect  of  the  species,  and  in  the  letters  of  Mrs. 
Winifred  Jenkins  to  her  fellow  maid-servant  Mrs.  Mary 
Jones  at  Brambleton  Hall,  during  a  journey  made  by 
the  family  to  the  North,  we  have  some  very  worthy  and 
strongly-marked  originals  not  only  of  Mrs.  Malaprop  and 
Mrs.  Partington,  but  of  the  immortal  Sairey  Gamp  and  of 
scores  of  other  descendants  in  Thackeray  and  Dickens, 
here  and  there. 


1 86  The  English  Novel 

I  can  quote  but  a  few  lines  from  the  last  letter  of  Mrs. 
Winifred  Jenkins  concluding  the  Expedition  of  Hum- 
phrey Clinker  J  which  by  the  way  is  told  entirely  through 
letters  from  one  character  to  another,  like  Richardson's. 

"  To  Mrs.  Mary  Jones  at  Brambleton  Hall. 
"  Mrs.  Jones,  — 

"  Providence  has  bin  pleased  to  make  great 
halteration  in  the  pasture  of  our  affairs.  We  were  yesterday 
three  kiple  chined  by  the  grease  of  God  in  the  holy  bands  of 
matter-money." 

(The  novel  winds  up  with  a  general  marriage  of  pretty 
much  all  parties  concerned,  mistress,  maid,  master  and  man)  ; 
"  and  I  now  subscribe  myself  Loyd,  at  your  sarvice."  Here 
she  of  course  describes  the  wedding.  "  As  for  Madam 
Lashmiheygo,  you  nose  her  picklearities  —  her  head  to  be 
sure  was  fantastical ;  and  her  spouse  had  wrapped  her  with 
a  long  .  .  .  clock  from  the  land  of  the  selvedges.  .  .  .  Your 
humble  servant  had  on  a  plain  pea-green  tabby  sack,  with 
my  runnela  cap,  ruff  toupee,  and  side-curls.  They  said  I 
was  the  very  moral  of  Lady  Rickmanstone  but  not  so  pale  — 
that  may  well  be,  for  her  ladyship  is  my  elder  by  seven  good 
years  or  more.  Now,  Mrs.  Mary,  our  satiety  is  to  suppurate  j 
and  we  are  coming  home  "  —  which  irresistibly  reminds  us 
of  the  later  Mrs.  Malaprop's  famous  explanation  in  The 
Rivals  :  —  "  I  was  putrefied  with  astonishment."  —  "  Present 
my  compliments  to  Mrs.  Gwillim,  and  I  hope  she  and  I  will 
live  upon  dissent  terms  of  civility.  Being  by  God's  blessing 
removed  to  a  higher  spear  you'll  excuse  my  being  familiar 
with  the  lower  sarvints  of  the  family,  but  as  I  trust  you  will 
behave  respectful  and  keep  a  proper  distance  you  may 
always  depend  on  the  good  will  and  protection  of 
"Yours, 

«W.  Loyd." 

To  these  three  —  Richardson,  Fielding  and  Smollett 
—  I  have  now  only  to  add  the  name  of  Laurence  Sterne, 
whose  Tristram  Shandy  appeared  in  1759,  in  order  to 


The  Development  of  Personality      187 

complete  a  group  of  novel  writers  whose  moral  outcome 
is  much  the  same  and  who  are  still  reputed  in  all  cur- 
rent manuals  as  the  classic  founders  of  English  fiction. 
I  need  give  no  characterization  of  Sterne's  book,  which 
is  probably  the  best  known  of  all.  Every  one  recalls  the 
Chinese  puzzle  of  humor  in  Tristram  Shandy y  which 
pops  something  grotesque  or  indecent  at  us  in  every 
crook.  As  to  its  morality,  I  know  good  people  who  love 
the  book ;  but  to  me,  when  you  sum  it  all  up,  its  teach- 
ing is  that  a  man  may  spend  his  life  in  low,  brutish, 
inane  pursuits  and  may  have  a  good  many  little  private 
sins  on  his  conscience,  —  but  will  nevertheless  be  per- 
fectly sure  of  heaven  if  he  can  have  retained  the  ability 
to  weep  a  maudlin  tear  over  a  tale  of  distress ;  or,  in 
short,  that  a  somewhat  irritable  state  of  the  lachrymal 
glands  will  be  cheerfully  accepted  by  the  Deity  as  a  sub- 
stitute for  saving  grace  or  a  life  of  self-sacrifice.  As  I 
have  said,  these  four  writers  still  maintain  their  position 
as  the  classic  novelists  and  their  moral  influence  is  still 
copiously  extolled;  but  I  cannot  help  believing  that 
much  of  this  praise  is  simply  well-meaning  ignorance. 
I  protest  that  I  can  read  none  of  these  books  without 
feeling  as  if  my  soul  had  been  in  the  rain,  draggled, 
muddy,  miserable.  In  other  words,  they  play  upon  life 
as  upon  a  violin  without  a  bridge,  in  the  deliberate 
endeavor  to  get  the  most  depressing  tones  possible  from 
the  instrument.  This  is  done  under  pretext  of  showing 
us  vice. 

In  fine,  and  this  is  the  characterization  I  shall  use  in 
contrasting  this  group  with  that  much  sweeter  group  led 
by  George  Eliot,  the  distinctive  feature  of  these  first 
novelists  is  to  show  men  with  microscopic  detail  how 
bad  men  may  be.  I  shall  presently  illustrate  with  the 
George  Eliot  group  how  much  larger  the  mission  of  the 


1 88  The  English  Novel 

novel  is  than  this :  meantime,  I  cannot  leave  this  matter 
without  recording  in  the  plainest  terms  that  —  for  far 
deeper  reasons  than  those  which  Roger  Bacon  gave  for 
sweeping  away  the  works  of  Aristotle  —  if  I  had  my  way 
with  these  classic  books  I  would  blot  them  from  the  face 
of  the  earth.  One  who  studies  the  tortuous  behaviors 
of  men  in  history  soon  ceases  to  wonder  at  any  human 
inconsistency ;  but,  so  far  as  I  can  marvel,  I  do  daily 
that  we  regulate  by  law  the  sale  of  gunpowder,  the 
storage  of  nitro-glycerine,  the  administration  of  poison  — • 
all  of  which  can  hurt  but  our  bodies  —  but  are  absolutely 
careless  of  these  things  —  so-called  classic  books,  which 
wind  their  infinite  insidiousnesses  about  the  souls  of 
our  young  children  and  either  strangle  them  or  cover 
them  with  unremovable  slime  under  our  very  eyes, 
working  in  a  security  of  fame  and  so-called  classicism 
that  is  more  effectual  for  this  purpose  than  the  security 
of  the  dark.  Of  this  terror  it  is  the  sweetest  souls  who 
know  most. 

In  the  beginning  of  Aurora  Leigh,  Mrs.  Browning 
speaks  this  matter  so  well  that  I  must  clinch  my  opinion 
with  her  words.  Aurora  Leigh  says,  recalling  her  own 
youthful  experience : 

**  Sublimest  danger,  over  which  none  weeps, 
When  any  young  wayfaring  soul  goes  forth 
Alone,  unconscious  of  the  perilous  road, 
The  day-sun  dazzling  in  his  limpid  eyes, 
To  thrust  his  own  way,  he  an  alien,  through 
The  world  of  books  !    Ah,  you !  —  you  think  it  fine, 
You  clap  hands  — '  A  fair  day ! '  —  you  cheer  him  on 
As  if  the  worst,  could  happen,  were  to  rest 
Too  long  beside  a  fountain.     Yet  behold, 
Behold  !  — the  world  of  Dooks  is  still  the  world  ; 
And  worldlings  in  it  are  less  merciful 
And  more  puissant.     For  the  wicked  there 
Are  winged  like  angels.     Every  knife  that  strikes 


The  Development  of  Personality      189 

Is  edged  from  elemental  fire  to  assail 
A  spiritual  life ;  the  beautiful  seems  right 
By  force  of  beauty,  and  the  feeble  wrong 
Because  of  weakness.  .... 

...  In  the  book-world,  true, 
There's  no  lack,  neither,  of  God's  saints  and  kings, 

True,  many  a  prophet  teaches  in  the  roads ; 

But  stay  —  who  judges  ?       .  ... 

.  .  .  The  child  there  ?    Would  you  leave 
That  child  to  wander  in  a  battle-field 
And  push  his  innocent  smile  against  the  guns ; 
Or  even  in  a  catacomb  —  his  torch 
Grown  ragged  in  the  fluttering  air,  and  all 
The  dark  a-mutter  round  him  ?  not  a  child." 

But  to  return  to  our  sketch  of  English  fiction,  it  is 
now  deHghtful  to  find  a  snowdrop  springing  from  this 
muck  of  the  classics.  In  the  year  1766  appeared  Gold- 
smith's Ficay  of  Wakefield. 

One  likes  to  recall  the  impression  which  the  purity  of 
this  charming  book  made  upon  the  German  Goethe. 
Fifty  years  after  Goethe  had  read  it  —  or  rather  after 
Herder  read  to  him  a  translation  of  the  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field while  he  was  a  law-student  at  Strasburg  —  the  old 
poet  mentions  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Zelter  the  strong 
and  healthy  influence  of  this  story  upon  him,  just  at  the 
critical  point  of  his  mental  development ;  and  yesterday 
while  reading  the  just  published  Reminiscences  of  Thomas 
Carlyle  I  found  a  pleasant  pendant  to  this  testimony  of 
Goethe's  in  favor  of  Goldsmith's  novel  in  an  entry  of 
the  rugged  old  man  in  which  he  describes  the  far  out- 
look and  new  wisdom  which  he  managed  to  conquer 
from  Goethe's  Wilhelm  Meister^  after  many  repulsions. 

"  Schiller  done,  I  began  Wilhelm  Meister,  a  task  I  liked 
perhaps  rather  better,  too  scanty  as  my  knowledge  of  the 
element,  and  even  of  the  language,  still  was.    Two  years 


190  The  English  Novel 

before  I  had  at  length,  after  some  repulsion,  got  into  the 
heart  of  Wilhelm  Meister,  and  eagerly  read  it  through; 
my  sally  out,  after  finishing,  along  the  vacant  streets  of 
Edinburgh,  a  windless,  Scotch-misty  morning,  is  still  vivid 
to  me.  '  Grand,  serenely,  harmoniously  built  together,  far- 
seeing,  wise  and  true.  Where,  for  many  years,  or  in  my 
whole  life  before,  have  I  read  such  a  book  ? '  Which  I  was 
now,  really  in  part  as  a  kind  of  duty,  conscientiously  trans- 
lating for  my  countrymen,  if  they  would  read  it  —  as  a  select 
few  of  them  have  ever  since  kept  doing." 

Of  the  difference  between  the  moral  effect  of  Gold- 
smith's Vicar  of  Wakefield  and  the  classical  works  just 
mentioned  I  need  not  waste  your  time  in  speaking.  No 
great  work  in  the  English  novel  appears  until  we  reach 
Scott  whose  Waverley  astonished  the  world  in  18 14;  and 
during  the  intervening  period  from  this  book  to  the 
Vicar  of  Wakefield  perhaps  there  are  no  works  notable 
enough  to  be  mentioned  in  so  rapid  a  sketch  as  this 
unless  it  be  the  society  novels  of  Miss  Burney,  Evelina 
and  Cecilia,  the  dark  and  romantic  stories  of  Mrs. 
Radcliffe,  the  Caleb  Williams  of  WiUiam  Godwin  — 
with  which  he  believed  he  was  making  an  epoch  because 
it  was  a  novel  without  love  as  a  motive  —  Miss  Edge- 
worth's  moral  tales  and  the  quiet  and  elegant  narratives 
of  Jane  Austen. 

But  I  cannot  help  mentioning  here  a  book  which 
occurs  during  this  period,  and  which  attaches  itself  by 
the  oddest  imaginable  ties  to  what  was  said,  in  a  pre- 
vious lecture,  of  the  novel  as  the  true  meeting-ground 
where  the  poetic  imagination  and  the  scientific  imagina- 
tion come  together  and  incorporate  themselves.  Now, 
to  make  the  true  novel  —  the  work  which  takes  all  the 
miscellaneous  products  of  scientific  observation  and 
carries  them  up  into  a  higher  plane  and  incarnates  them 
into  the  characters  (as  we  call  them)  of  a  book,  and 


The  Development  of  Personality      191 

makes  them  living  flesh  and  blood  like  ourselves  —  to 
effect  this,  there  must  be  a  true  incorporation  and 
merger  of  the  scientific  and  poetic  faculties  in  one :  it 
is  not  sufficient  if  they  work  side  by  side  like  two  horses 
abreast,  they  must  work  like  a  man  and  wife  with  one 
soul;  or,  to  change  the  figure,  their  union  must  not 
be  mechanical,  it  must  be  chemical,  producing  a  thing 
better  than  either  alone ;  or,  to  change  the  figure  again, 
the  union  must  be  like  that  which  Browning  has  noticed 
as  existing  among  the  ingredients  of  a  musical  chord, 
when,  as  he  says,  out  of  three  tones,  one  makes  not 
a  fourth,  but  a  star. 

Now  the  book  I  mean  shows  us  the  scientific  faculty 
and  the  poetic  faculty  —  and  no  weak  faculties  either  — 
working  along  together,  not  merged,  not  chemically 
united,  not  lighting  up  matters  like  a  star,  —  with  the 
result,  as  seems  to  me,  of  producing  the  very  funniest 
earnest  book  in  our  language.  It  is  The  Loves  of  the 
Plants,  by  Dr.  Erasmus  Darwin,  grandfather,  I  believe, 
to  our  own  grave  and  patient  Charles  Darwin.  The 
Loves  of  the  Plants  is  practically  a  series  of  little  novels  in 
which  the  heroes  and  heroines  belong  to  the  vegetable 
world.  Linnaeus  had  announced  the  sexuality  of  plants, 
and  had  made  this  idea  a  principle  of  classification, 
the  one-stamen  class,  Monandria,  two-stamen  class, 
Diandria,  etc.,  etc.  All  this  the  diligent  and  truly  loving 
Doctor  framed  into  poetry,  and  poetry  which  so  far  as 
technical  execution  goes  is  quite  as  good  as  the  very 
best  of  the  Pope  school  which  it  follows.  Here  are  a 
few  specimens  of  the  poem  : 

** Descend, ye  hovering  Sylphs!  aerial  Quires; 
And  sweep  with  little  hands  your  silver  lyres ; 
With  fairy  footsteps  print  your  grassy  rings, 
Ye  Gnomes  I  accordant  to  the  tinkling  strings : 


192  The  English  Novel 

While  in  soft  notes  I  tune  to  oaten  reed 
Gay  hopes,  and  amorous  sorrows  of  the  mead ;  -^ 
From  giant  Oaks,  that  wave  their  branches  dark. 
To  the  dwarf  Moss  that  clings  upon  their  bark, 
What  Beaux  and  Beauties  crowd  the  gaudy  groves, 
And  woo  and  win  their  vegetable  Loves." 

"First  the  tall  Canna  lifts  his  curled  brow 
Erect  to  heaven,  and  plights  his  nuptial  vow ; 
The  virtuous  pair,  in  milder  regions  born. 
Dread  the  rude  blast  of  Autumn's  icy  morn ; 
Round  the  chill  fair  he  folds  his  crimson  vest, 
And  clasps  the  timorous  beauty  to  his  breast." 

Here,  however,  a  serious  case  presents  itself;  in  Canna 
there  was  one  stamen  to  one  pistil,  and  this  was  com- 
fortable j  but  in  the  next  flower  he  happened  to  reach  — 
the  Genista  or  Wild  Broom  —  there  were  ten  stamens  to 
one  pistil,  that  is,  ten  lovers  to  one  lady ;  but  the  intrepid 
Doctor  carries  it  through,  all  the  same,  managing  the 
whole  point  simply  by  airy  swiftness  of  treatment : 

"  Sweet  blooms  Genista  1  in  the  myrtle  shade, 
And  ten  fond  brothers  woo  the  haughty  maid." 

But  sometimes  our  botanist  comes  within  a  mere  ace 
of  beautiful  poetry,  as  for  example  : 

"  When  o'er  the  cultured  lawns  and  dreary  wastes, 
Retiring  Autumn  flings  her  howling  blasts, 
Bends  in  tumultuous  waves  the  struggling  woods, 
And  showers  their  leafy  honors  on  the  floods ; 
In  withering -heaps  collects  the  flowery  spoil ; 
And  each  chill  insect  sinks  beneath  the  soil : 
Quick  flies  fair  Tulipa  the  loud  alarms, 
And  folds  her  infant  closer  in  her  arms ; 
In  some  lone  cave,  secure  pavilion,  lies. 
And  waits  the  courtship  of  serener  skies." 

1  Genista,  or  Planta  Genista^  origin  of  "  Plantagenet,"  from  the 
original  name-giver's  habit  of  wearing  a  tuft  of  his  native  heath  or 
broom  in  his  bonnet. 


The  Development  of  Personality      193 

This  book  has  what  it  calls  Interludes  between  the 
parts,  in  which  the  Bookseller  and  the  Poet  discuss 
various  points  arising  in  it ;  and  its  oddity  is  all  the 
more  increased  when  one  finds  here  a  number  of  the 
most  just,  incisive,  right-minded  and  large  views  not 
only  upon  the  mechanism  of  poetry,  but  upon  its 
essence  and  its  relations  to  other  arts.^ 

Nor  need  I  dwell  upon  Scott's  novels  which  stretch 
from  1 8 14  to  1831,  which  we  have  all  known  from  our 
childhood  as  among  the  most  hale  and  strengthening 
waters  in  which  the  young  soul  ever  bathed.  They 
discuss  no  moral  problems,  they  place  us  in  no  relation 
towards  our  fellow  that  can  be  called  moral  at  all,  they 
belong  to  that  part  of  us  which  is  youthful,  undebating, 
wholly  unmoral  —  though  not  immoral, —  they  are  simply 
always  young,  always  healthy,  always  miraculous.  And 
I  can  only  give  now  a  hasty  additional  flavor  of  these 

1  Carlyle's  opinion  of  the  book  is  given  with  a  comical  grimness 
in  his  Reminiscences  d  propos  of  the  younger  Erasmus  Darwin, 
who  used  much  to  visit  the  Carlyles  after  they  settled  in  London  : 

"  Erasmus  Darwin,  a  most  diverse  kind  of  mortal,  came  to  seek 
us  out  very  soon  ('had  heard  of  Carlyle  in  Germany,'  etc.),  and 
continues  ever  since  to  be  a  quiet  house-friend,  honestly  attached ; 
though  his  visits  latterly  have  been  rarer  and  rarer,  health  so  poor, 
I  so  occupied,  etc.,  etc.  He  had  something  of  original  and  sarcas- 
tically ingenious  in  him ;  one  of  the  sincerest,  naturally  truest,  and 
most  modest  of  men ;  elder  brother  of  Charles  Darwin  (the  famed 
Darwin  on  Species  of  these  days),  to  whom  I  rather  prefer  him 
for  intellect,  had  not  his  health  quite  doomed  him  to  silence  and 
patient  idleness  —  grandsons,  both,  of  the  first  famed  Erasmus 
('  Botanic  Garden,'  etc.),  who  also  seems  to  have  gone  upon 
'species  '  questions,  'omnia  ex  conchis'  (all  from  oysters)  being  a 
dictum  of  his  (even  a  stamp  he  sealed  with  still  extant),  as  this 
present  Erasmus  once  told  me,  many  long  years  before  this  of 
Darwin  on  Species  came  up  among  us !  Wonderful  to  me,  as 
indicat;ng  the  capricious  stupidity  of  mankind  :  never  could  rea« 
a  page  of  it,  or  waste  the  least  thought  upon  it." 

13 


194  The  English  Novel 

Scott  days  by  reminding  you  of  the  bare  names  of 
Thomas  Hope,  Lockhart,  Theodore  Hook,  Mrs.  Trol- 
lope,  Mrs.  Gore  and  Miss  Mitford.  It  seems  always 
comfortable  in  a  confusion  of  this  kind  to  have  some 
easily-remembered  formula  which  may  present  us  a 
considerable  number  of  important  facts  in  portable 
shape.  Now  the  special  group  of  writers  which  I  wish 
to  contrast  with  the  classic  group,  consisting  of  Dickens, 
Thackeray,  Tennyson,  Mrs.  Browning,  Charlotte  Bronte 
and  George  Eliot,  are  at  work  between  1837  and  1857, 
and  for  the  purpose  of  giving  you  a  convenient  skeleton 
or  set  of  vertebrae  containing  some  main  facts  affecting 
the  English  novel  of  the  nineteenth  century  I  have 
arranged  this  simple  table  which  proceeds  by  steps  of 
ten  years  J12 Jo  the  period  mentioned. 

For  example  :  since  these  all  end  in  seven ;  beginning 
with  the  year  1807  it  seems  easy  to  remember  that  that 
is  the  date  of  Charles  and  Mary  Lamb's  Tales  fro?n 
Shakspere ;  skipping  ten  years  to  181 7,  in  this  year 
Blackwood's  Magazine  is  established,  a  momentous  event 
in  fiction  generally  and  particularly  as  to  George  Eliot's ; 
advancing  ten  years,  in  1827  Bulwer's  Pelham  appears 
and  also  the  very  stimulating  Specimens  of  German 
Romance  which  Thomas  Carlyle  edited;  in  1837  the 
adorable  Pickwick  strolls  into  fiction;  in  1847  Thack- 
eray prints  Vanity  Fair,  Charlotte  Bronte  gives  us  Jane 
Eyre,  and  Tennyson  The  Princess ;  and  finally  in  1857, 
as  we  have  seen,  George  Eliot's  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life 
are  printed,  while  so  closely  upon  it  in  the  previous  year 
as  to  be  fairly  considered  contemporary  comes  Mrs. 
Browning's  Aurora  Leigh. 

I  do  not  know  any  more  vivid  way  of  bringing  before 
you  the  precise  work  which  English  fiction  is  doing  at 
the  time  George  Eliot  sets  in  than  by  asking  you  to  run 


The  Development  of  Personality      195 

your  eye  along  the  last  four  dates  here  given,  1827, 
1837,  1847,  1857.  Here,  in  1827,  advances  a  well- 
dressed  man,  bows  a  fine  bow,  and  falls  to  preaching  his 
gospel :  "  My  friends,  under  whatever  circumstances  a 
man  may  be  placed,  he  has  it  always  in  his  power  to  be 
a  gentleman ;  "  and  Bulwer's  gentleman  is  always  given 
as  a  very  manful  and  Christian  being.  I  am  well  aware 
of  the  modern  tendency  to  belittle  Bulwer,  as  a  slight 
creature  ;  but  with  the  fresh  recollection  of  his  books  as 
they  fell  upon  my  own  boyhood,  I  cannot  recall  a  single 
one  which  did  not  leave  as  a  last  residuum  the  picture 
in  some  sort  of  the  chivalrous  gentleman  impressed 
upon  my  heart.  I  cheerfully  admit  that  he  sometimes 
came  dangerously  near  snobbery,  and  that  he  was  un- 
civil and  undignified  and  many  other  bad  things  in  the 
New  Timon  and  the  Tennyson  quarrel ;  and  I  concede 
that  it  must  be  difficult  for  us  —  you  and  me,  who  are 
so  superior  and  who  have  no  faults  of  our  own  —  to  look 
upon  these  failings  with  patience ;  and  yet  I  cannot  help 
remembering  that  every  novel  of  Bulwer's  is  skillfully 
written  and  entertaining,  and  that  there  is  not  an  ignoble 
thought  or  impure  stimulus  in  the  whole  range  of  his 
works. 

But,  advancing,  here  in  1837  comes  on  a  preacher 
who  takes  up  the  slums  and  raggedest  miseries  of  / 
London  and  plumps  them  boldly  down  in  the  parlors  / 
of  high  life  and,  like  the  boy  in  the  fairy  tale  whose 
fiddle  compelled  every  hearer  to  dance  in  spite  of  him- 
self, presently  has  a  great  train  of  people  following  him, 
ready  to  do  his  bidding  in  earnestly  reforming  the 
prisons,  the  schools,  the  workhouses,  and  the  like,  what 
time  the  entire  train  are  roaring  with  the  genialest  of 
laughter  at  the  comical  and  grotesque  figures  which  this 
preacher  Dickens  has  fished  up  out  of  the  London  mud. 


196  The  English  Novel 

But  again :  here  in  1847  we  have  Thackeray  exposing 
shame  and  high  vulgarity  and  minute  wickedness,  while 
Charlotte  Bronte  and  Tennyson,  with  the  widest  difference 
in  method,  are  for  the  first  time  expounding  the  doctrine 
of  co-equal  sovereignty  as  between  man  and  woman, 
and  bringing  up  the  historic  conception  of  the  person- 
ality of  woman  to  a  plane  in  all  respects  level  with, 
though  properly  differentiated  from,  that  of  man.  It  is 
curious  to  see  the  depth  of  Charlotte  Bronte's  adoration 
for  Thackeray,  the  intense,  high-pitched  woman  for  the 
somewhat  slack  and,  as  I  always  think,  somewhat  low- 
\  pitched  satirist ;  and  perhaps  the  essential  utterance  of 
Thackeray,  as  well  as  the  fervent  tone  which  I  beg  you 
to  observe  is  now  being  acquired  by  the  English  novel, 
the  awful  consciousness  of  its  power  and  its  mission,  may 
be  very  sufficiently  gathered  from  some  of  Charlotte 
Bronte's  words  about  Thackeray  which  occur  in  the 
Preface  to  the  second  edition  ofhei/ane  Eyre, 

"  There  is  a  man  in  our  own  days  whose  words  are  not 
framed  to  tickle  delicate  ears ;  who,  to  my  thinking,  comes 
before  the  great  ones  of  society  much  as  the  son  of  Imlah 
came  before  the  throned  kings  of  Judah  and  Israel;  and  who 
speaks  truth  as  deep,  with  a  power  as  prophet-like  and  as 
vital  —  a  mien  as  dauntless  and  as  daring.  Is  the  satirist  of 
Vanity  Fair  admired  in  high  places  .^  I  cannot  tell ;  but  I 
think  if  some  of  those  amongst  whom  he  hurls  the  Greek- 
fire  of  his  sarcasm,  and  over  whom  he  flashes  the  levin-brand 
of  his  denunciation,  were  to  take  his  warnings  in  time,  they 
or  their  seed  might  yet  escape  a  fatal  Ramoth-Gilead. 

"  Why  have  I  alluded  to  this  man  ?  I  have  alluded  to  him, 
reader,  because  I  think  I  see  in  him  an  intellect  profounder 
and  more  unique  than  his  contemporaries  have  yet  recog- 
nized ;  because  I  regard  him  as  the  first  social  regenerator 
of  the  day  —  as  the  very  master  of  that  working  corps  who 
would  restore  to  rectitude  the  warped  system  of  things." 


The  Development  of  Personality      197 

Into  this  field  of  beneficent  activity  which  the  novel 
has  created,  comes  in  1857  George  Eliot :  comes  with  no 
more  noise  than  that  of  a  snow-flake  falling  on  snow, 
yet  —  as  I  have  said  and  as  I  wish  now  to  show  with 
some  detail  —  comes  as  an  epoch-maker,  both  by  virtue 
of  the  peculiar  mission  she  undertakes  and  of  the  method 
in  which  she  carries  it  out. 

What  then  is  that  peculiar  mission? 

In  the  very  first  of  these  stories,  Amos  Barton^  she 
announces  it  quite  explicitly,  though  it  cannot  be  sup- 
posed at  all  consciously.  Before  quoting  the  passage, 
in  order  that  you  may  at  once  take  the  full  significance 
of  it,  let  me  remind  you  of  a  certain  old  and  grievous 
situation  as  between  genius  and  the  commonplace  per- 
son. For  a  long  time  every  most  pious  thinker  must 
have  found  immediately  in  his  path  a  certain  obstructive 
odium  upon  the  Supreme  Being  (I  speak  with  the  great- 
est reverence)  in  the  matter  of  the  huge  and  apparently 
unjustifiable  partiality  of  His  spiritual  gifts  as  between 
man  and  man. 

We  have  a  genius  (say)  once  in  a  hundred  years: 
but  this  hundred  years  represents  three  generations  of 
the  whole  world ;  that  is  to  say,  here  are  three  thousand 
million  commonplace  people  to  one  genius. 

At  once,  with  all  the  force  of  this  really  inconceivable 
numerical  majority,  the  cry  arises.  How  monstrous ! 
Here  are  three  thousand  millions  of  people  to  eat,  sleep, 
die,  and  rot  into  oblivion,  and  but  one  man  is  to  have 
such  faculty  as  may  conquer  death,  win  fame,  and  live 
beyond  the  worms  ! 

No  one  feels  this  inequality  so  keenly  as  the  great 
genius  himself.  I  find  in  Shakspere,  in  Beethoven,  in 
others,  often  an  outcrop  of  feeling  which  shows  that 
the  genius  cringes  under  this  load  of  favoritism,  as  if  he 


198  The  English  Novel 

should  cry  in  his  lonesome  moments,  Dear  Lord,  why 
hast  thou  provided  so  much  for  me,  and  so  little  for  yonder 
multitude  ?  In  plain  fact,  it  seems  as  if  there  was  never 
such  a  problem  as  this :  what  shall  we  do  about  these 
three  thousand  milHons  of  common  men  as  against  the 
one  uncommon  man,  to  save  the  goodness  of  God  from 
seeming  like  the  blind  caprice  of  a  Roman  Emperor? 

It  is  precisely  here  that  George  EHot  comes  to  the 
rescue,  and  though  she  does  not  solve  the  problem  — 
no  one  expects  to  do  that  —  at  any  rate  she  seems  to  me 
to  make  it  tolerable,  and  to  take  it  out  of  that  class  of 
questions  which  one  shuts  back  for  fear  of  nightmare 
and  insanity.  Emerson  has  treated  this  matter,  partially, 
and  from  a  sort  of  side-light.  "  But,"  he  exclaims  in  the 
end  of  his  essay  on  The  Uses  of  Great  Men^  ^^  ^reat  men  : 
—  the  word  is  injurious^  Is  there  caste  ?  Is  there  fate  ? 
What  becomes  of  the  promise  to  virtue  ?  .  .  .  Why  are 
the  masses,  from  the  dawn  of  history  down,  food  for 
knives  and  powder?  The  idea  dignifies  a  few  leaders, 
.  .  .  and  they  make  war  and  death  sacred ;  but  what  for 
the  wretches  whom  they  hire  and  kill?  The  cheapness 
of  man  is  everyday's  tragedy."  And  more  to  this  pur- 
port. But  nothing  could  be  more  unsatisfactory  than 
Emerson's  solution  of  the  problem.  He  unhesitatingly 
announces  on  one  page  that  the  wrong  is  to  be  righted 
by  giving  every  man  a  chance  in  the  future,  in  (say)  dif- 
ferent worlds  ;  every  man  is  to  have  his  turn  at  being  a 
genius :  until  "  there  are  no  common  men."  But  two 
pages  farther  on  this  elaborate  scheme  of  redress  is  com- 
pletely swept  away  by  the  announcement  that  after  all 
the  individual  is  nothing,  the  quality  is  what  abides,  and 
so  falls  away  in  that  most  marvelous  delusion  of  his  — 
the  strange  wise  man  !  —  that  personality  is  to  die  away 
into  the  first  cause. 


The  Development  of  Personality      199 

On  the  other  hand,  if  you  will  permit  me  to  quote  a 
few  pathetic  words  which  I  find  in  Carlyle's  Reminis- 
cencesy  in  the  nature  of  a  sigh  and  aspiration  and  breathed 
blessing  all  in  one  upon  his  wife  and  her  ministrations 
to  him  during  that  singular  period  of  his  life  when  he 
suddenly  left  London  and  buried  himself  in  his  wild 
Scotch  farm  of  Craigenputtoch,  I  shall  be  able  to  show 
you  how  Carlyle,  most  unconsciously,  dreams  toward  a 
far  more  satisfactory  end  of  this  matter  than  Emerson's, 
and  then  how  George  Eliot  actually  brings  Carlyle's 
dream  to  definite  form  and  at  least  partial  fulfilment  in 
the  very  beginning  of  her  work.  Carlyle  is  speaking  of 
the  rugged  trials  and  apparent  impossibilities  of  living  at 
Craigenputtoch  when  he  and  his  Jeanie  went  there,  and 
how  bravely  and  quietly  she  faced  and  overcame  the 
poverty,  the  ugliness,  the  almost  squalor,  which  was  their 
condition  for  a  long  time.  "  Poverty  and  mean  obstruc- 
tion continued,"  he  says,  "  to  preside  over  it,  but  were 
transformed  by  human  valor  of  various  sorts  into  a  kind 
of  victory  and  royalty.  Something  of  high  and  great 
dwelt  in  it,  though  nothing  could  be  smaller  and  lower 
than  many  of  the  details.  How  blessed  might  poor 
mortals  be  in  the  straitest  circumstances,  if  only  their 
wisdom  and  fidelity  to  Heaven  and  to  one  another  were 
adequately  great !  It  looks  to  me  now  like  a  kind  of 
humble  russet-coated  epic,  that  seven  years'  settlement 
at  Craigenputtoch,  very  poor  in  this  world's  goods,  but 
not  without  an  intrinsic  dignity  greater  and  more  impor- 
tant than  then  appeared ;  thanks  very  mainly  to  her,  and 
her  faculties  and  magnanimities,  without  whom  it  had 
notJ?een  possible." 

4  And   now,  let  us  hear  the   words  in   which   George 

I  Eliot  begins  to  preach  the  "  russet-coated  epic  "  of  every- 
day life  and  of  commonplace  people. 


200  The  English  Novel 

"  The  Rev.  Amos  Barton,  whose  sad  fortunes  I  have  under- 
taken to  relate,  was,  you  perceive,  in  no  respect  an  ideal  or 
exceptional  character ;  and  perhaps  I  am  doing  a  bold  thing 
to  bespeak  your  sympathy  on  behalf  of  a  man  who  was  so 
very  far  from  remarkable,  —  a  man  whose  virtues  were  not 
heroic,  and  who  had  no  undetected  crime  within  his  breast ; 
who  had  not  the  slightest  mystery  hanging  about  him,  but 
was  palpably  and  unmistakably  commonplace  ;  who  was  not 
even  in  love,  but  had  had  that  complaint  favourably  many 
years  ago.  '  An  utterly  uninteresting  character  !  '  I  think  I 
hear  a  lady  reader  exclaim  —  Mrs.  Farthingale,  for  example, 
who  prefers  the  ideal  in  fiction ;  to  whom  tragedy  means 
ermine  tippets,  adultery,  and  murder;  and  comedy,  the 
adventures  of  some  personage  who  is  quite  a  '  character.' 

"  But,  my  dear  madam,  it  is  so  very  large  a  majority  of 
your  fellow-countrymen  that  are  of  this  insignificant  stamp. 
At  least  eighty  out  of  a  hundred  of  your  adult  male  fellow- 
Britons  returned  in  the  last  census  are  neither  extraordinarily 
silly,  nor  extraordinarily  wicked,  nor  extraordinarily  wise ; 
their  eyes  are  neither  deep  and  liquid  with  sentiment,  nor 
sparkling  with  suppressed  witticisms ;  they  have  probably 
had  no  hair-breadth  escapes  or  thrilling  adventures;  their 
brains  are  certainly  not  pregnant  with  genius,  and  their  pas- 
sions have  not  manifested  themselves  at  all  after  the  fashion 
of  a  volcano.  They  are  simply  men  of  complexions  more 
or  less  muddy,  whose  conversation  is  more  or  less  bald  and 
disjointed.  Yet  these  commonplace  people  —  many  of  them 
—  bear  a  conscience,  and  have  felt  the  sublime  prompting  to 
do  the  painful  right ;  they  have  their  unspoken  sorrows  and 
their  sacred  joys ;  their  hearts  have  perhaps  gone  out 
towards  their  first-born,  and  they  have  mourned  over  the 
irreclaimable  dead.  Nay,  is  there  not  a  pathos  in  their  very 
insignificance,  —  in  our  comparison  of  their  dim  and  narrow 
existence  with  the  glorious  possibilities  of  that  human  nature 
which  they  share  ? 

"Depend  upon  it,  you  would  gain  unspeakably  if  you 
would  learn  with  me  to  see  some  of  the  poetry  and  the 
pathos,  the  tragedy  and  the  comedy,  lying  in  the  experience 
of  a  human  soul  that  looks  out  through  dull  gray  eyes,  and 


The  Development  of  Personality      201 

that  speaks  in  a  voice  of  quite  ordinary  tone.  In  that  case, 
I  should  have  no  fear  of  your  not  caring  to  know  what 
farther  befell  the  Rev.  Amos  Barton,  or  of  your  thinking  the 
homely  details  I  have  to  tell  at  all  beneath  your  attention. 
As  it  is,  you  can,  if  you  please,  decline  to  pursue  my  story 
farther ;  and  you  will  easily  find  reading  more  to  your  taste, 
since  I  learn  from  the  newspapers  that  many  remarkable 
novels,  full  of  striking  situations,  thrilling  incidents,  and 
eloquent  writing,  have  appeared  only  within  the  last  season." 


Passing  on  to  Adam  Bede^  The  Mill  on  the  Floss ^  and 
the  rest  of  George  Eliot's  works  in  historic  order,  let  us 
see  with-  what  delicious  fun,  what  play  of  wit,  what 
ever-abiding  arid  depth-illuminating  humor,  what  creative 
genius,  what  manifold  forms  of  living  flesh  and  blood, 
George  Eliot  prearhed  i;he  pnssj]7i1jty  of  such  moral 
greatness  on  the  part  of  every  most  commonplace  man 
and  woman  as  completely  reduces  to  a  level  the  apparent 
inequality  JT]  th^  mnti;^r  of  p^enius^  and  so  illustrated  the 
universal  **  russet-coated  epic." 


202  The  English  Novel 


IX 


Before  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  had  ceased  to  run,  in 
the  latter  part  of  the  year  1857,  George  Eliot  had  already 
begun  a  novel  more  complete  in  form  than  any  of  the 
three  tales  which  composed  that  series.  Early  in  1858 
she  made  a  visit  to  the  Continent,  and  it  was  from 
Munich  that  a  considerable  portion  of  the  MS.  of  her 
new  book  was  sent  to  her  publisher,  Mr.  Blackwood. 
This  was  Adam  Bede^  which  she  completed  by  the  end 
of  October,  1858. 

It  was  brought  out  immediately  in  book  form ;  George 
Eliot  seemed  desirous  of  putting  her  public  to  a  speedier 
test  than  could  be  secured  by  running  the  story  through 
successive  numbers  of  the  magazine,  as  usual ;  although 
the  enthusiastic  editor  declared  himself  very  willing  to 
enrich  the  pages  of  Blackwood^ s  with  it.  It  was  there- 
fore printed  in  January,  1859. 

I  have  already  cited  a  letter  from  Marian  Evans  to  Miss 
Henschel  in  which  she  mentions  the  only  two  matters  of 
fact  connected  in  the  most  shadowy  way  as  originals  with 
the  plot  of  Adam  Bede.  One  of  these  is  that  in  her 
girlhood  she  had  met  an  aunt  of  hers,  about  sixty  years 
old,  who  had  in  early  life  been  herself  a  preacher.  To 
this  extent,  and  this  only,  is  there  any  original  for  our 
beautiful  snowdrop  —  Dinah  Morris,  in  Adam  Bede. 
Again,  in  the  same  letter,  George  Eliot  mentions  that 
this  same  aunt  had  told  her  of  once  spending  a  night  in 
prison  to  comfort  a  poor  girl  who  had  murdered  her 
own  child,  and  that  this  incident  lay  in  her  mind  for 
many  years  until  it  became  the  germ  of  Adam  Bede, 


The  Development  of  Personality      203 

These  are  certainly  but  shadowy  connections;  yet 
probably  the  greatest  works  are  built  upon  quite  as  filmy 
a  relation  to  any  actual  precedent  facts.  A  rather  pretty 
story  is  told  of  Mrs.  Carlyle,  which  perhaps  very  well 
illustrates  this  filmy  relation.  It  is  told  that  one  evening 
she  gave  to  Dickens  a  subject  for  a  novel  which  she  had 
indeed  worked  out  up  to  the  second  volume,  the  whole 
subject  consisting  of  a  weaving  together  of  such  insignifi- 
cant observations  as  any  one  must  make  of  what  goes 
on  at  houses  across  the  street.  Thus,  Mrs.  Carlyle  ob- 
served of  a  house  nearly  opposite  them  that  one  day  the 
blinds  or  curtains  would  be  up  or  down ;  the  next  day  a 
figure  in  a  given  costume  would  appear  at  the  window,  or 
a  cab  would  drive  —  hastily  or  otherwise  —  to  the  door, 
a  visitor  would  be  admitted  or  rejected,  etc. ;  such  bits 
of  circumstances  she  had  managed  to  connect  with 
human  characters  in  a  subtle  way  which  is  said  to  have 
given  Dickens  great  delight.  She  never  lived,  however, 
to  finish  her  novel  thus  begun. 

This  publication  of  Adam  Bede  placed  George  Eliot 
decisively  at  the  head  of  English  novel-writers,  with 
only  Dickens  for  second,  even ;  and  thus  enables  us  at 
this  point  fairly  to  do  what  the  ages  always  do  in  order 
to  get  that  notoriously  clear  view  of  things  which  comes 
with  time,  and  time  only :  that  is,  to  brush  away  all 
small  circumstances  and  cloudy  non-essentials  of  time  so 
as  to  bring  before  our  minds  the  whole  course  of  Enghsh 
fiction,  from  its  beginning  to  the  stage  at  which  it  is  now 
pending  with  Adam  Bede,  as  if  it  concerned  but  four 
names  and  two  periods,  to  wit : 

Richardson,  )     . , ,,      ^^.u 

'  y  middle  1 8th  century 
Fielding.       ) 

and 

'  [-middle  19th  century. 

George  Euot.  ) 


ao4  The  English  Novel 

It  was  shown  in  the  last  lecture  how  distinctly  the 
moral  purpose  of  the  English  fiction  represented  by  this 
upper  group  was  announced,  though  we  were  obliged  to 
record  a  mournful  failure  in  realizing  that  announcement. 
Adam  Bede  gives  us  the  firmest  support  for  a  first  and 
most  notable  difference  between  these  two  periods  of 
English  fiction  :  that  while  the  former  professes  morality 
yet  fails  beyond  description,  the  latter  executes  its 
moral  purpose  to  a  practical  degree  of  beneficence 
beyond  its  wildest  hopes.  Without  now  specifying  the 
subtle  revolutions  which  lie  in  Adam  Bede,  a  single  more 
tangible  example  will  be  sufficient  to  bring  this  entire 
difference  before  you.  If  I  ask  you  to  recall  how  it  is 
less  than  fifty  years  ago  that  Charles  Dickens  was  writing 
of  the  debtors'  prisons  with  all  the  terrible  earnest  of 
one  who  had  lived  with  his  own  father  and  mother  in 
those  unspeakable  dens ;  if  I  recall  to  you  what  marvel- 
ous haste  for  proverbially  slow  England  the  reform  thus 
initiated  took  upon  itself,  how  it  flew  from  this  to  that 
prison,  from  this  to  that  statute,  from  this  to  that  coun- 
try, until  now  not  only  is  no  such  thing  as  imprisonment 
for  debt  known  to  any  of  Dickens's  readers,  but,  with 
the  customary  momentum  of  such  generous  impulses  in 
society,  the  whole  movement  in  favor  of  debtors  is 
clearly  going  too  far  and  is  beginning  to  oppress  the 
creditor  with  part  of  the  injustice  it  formerly  meted  out 
to  the  debtor ;  if,  I  say,  I  thus  briefly  recall  to  you  this 
single  instance  of  moral  purpose  carried  into  perfect 
practice,  I  typify  a  great  and  characteristic  distinction 
between  these  two  schools.  For  in  point  of  fact  what 
one  may  call  an  organic  impracticability  lay  at  the  core 
of  the  moral  scheme  of  Richardson  and  Fielding.  I 
think  all  reasoning  and  experience  show  that  if  you  con- 
front a  man  day  by  day  with  nothing  but  a  picture  of 


The  Development  of  Personality      205 

his  own  unworthiness  the  final  effect  is,  not  to  stimulate, 
but  to  paralyze  his  moral  energy.  The  picture  of  the 
man  becomes  the  head  of  a  Gorgon.  And  this  was  pre- 
cisely what  this  early  English  fiction  professed  to  do.  It 
professed  to  show  man  exactly  as  he  is ;  but  although 
this  profession  mclude3[  the  good  man  as  well  as  the  bad 
man,  and  although  there  was  some  endeavor  to  reheve 
the  picture  with  tints  of  goodness  here  and  there,  the 
final  result  was — and  I  fearlessly  point  any  doubter  to 
the  net  outcome  from  Pamela  and  Clarissa  Harlowe 
down  to  Humphrey  Clinker  —  the  final  result  was  such  a 
portrayal  as  must  make  any  man  sit  down  before  the 
picture  in  a  miserable  deep  of  contempt  for  himself  and 
his  fellow  out  of  which  many  spirits  cannot  climb  at  all, 
and  none  can  climb  clean. 

JOn  the  other  hand,  the  work  of  Dickens  I  have  just 
referred  to  is  a  fair  specimen  of  the  way  in  which  the 
later  school  of  English  fiction  —  while  glozing  no  evil  — 
showed  man,  not  how  bad  he  might  be,  but  how  good 
he  might  be ;  and  thus,  instead  of  paralyzing  the  moral 
energy,  stimulated  it  to  the  most  beneficent  practical 
reform.  I  think  it  is  Robert  Browning  who  has  declared 
that  a  man  is  as  good  as  his  best ;  and  there  is  the 
subtlest  connection  between  the  right  to  measure  a  man's 
moral  stature  by  the  highest  thing  that  he  has  done, 
rather  than  the  lowest,  on  the  one  hand,  and  that  new 
and  beautiful  inspiration  which  comes  into  one's  life  as 
one  contemplates  more  and  more  instances  of  the  best 
in  human  behavior,  as  these  are  given  by  a  literature 
which  thus  lifts  one  up,  from  day  to  day,  with  the  declara- 
tion that  however  commonplace  a  man  may  be  he  yet  has 
within  himself  the  highest  capabiHties  of  what  we  have 
agreed  to  call  the  russet-coated  epic.  The  George  Eliot 
and  Dickens  school,  in  fact,  do  but  expand  the  text  of 


2o6  The  English  Novel 

the  Master  when  He  urges  His  disciples :  "  Be  ye  per- 
fect as  I  am  perfect." 

Let  me  here  suggest  a  second  difference  between  the 
two  schools  which  involves  an  interesting  coincidence  and 
specially  concerns  us  at  this  point.  i\s  between  Richard- 
son and  Fielding  :  it  has  been  well  said  (by  whom  I  can- 
not now  remember)  that  Fielding  tells  you  the  time  of 
day,  whilst  Richardson  shows  you  how  the  watch  is  made. 
As  indicating  Fielding's  method  of  conducting  the  action 
rather  by  concrete  dialogue  and  event,  than  by  those 
long  analytic  discussions  of  character  in  which  Richard- 
son would  fill  whole  pages  with  minute  descriptions  of 
the  changing  emotions  of  Clarissa  upon  reading  a  certain 
letter  from  Lovelace,  pursuing  the  emotion  as  it  were 
tear  by  tear,  lachrymatim,  —  this  characterization  happily 
enough  contrasts  the  analytic  strength  of  Richardson 
with  the  synthetic  strength  of  Fielding. 

A  strikingly  similar  cogtrast  obtains  as  between  George 
Eliot  and  Charles  Dickens.  Every  one  will  recog- 
nize as  soon  as  it  is  m^"<;j(7nP^  ^^^  rn^^^'^^^Qpic  analy- 
'  sis  of  character  throughout  Georg;e  Eliot  as  compare.d 
with  the  rapid  cartoon- strokes  bv  which  Dickens  brinp^s 
9"ut  his  figures.  But  the  antithesis  cannot  be  left  here  as 
between  George  Eliot  and  Dickens :  for  it  is  the  marvel 
of  the  formf^y's  art  tjiat,  though  SO  cooj,  and ,  analytic,  it 
nevertheless  sets  before  us  perfect  living  flesh-and-bloo3 

pf^nplp  I^Y  fndnpr  tViP  ^hnlp   ^.n^Jyti^prnnf^ril   with    a  'lyiV 
thetic  fire  of  thej-pi^-pcpt'ji  hnmnn  Hympathy 

And  here  we  come  upon  a  further  difference  between 
George  Eliot  and  Dickens  of  which  we  shall  have  many 
and  beautiful  examples  in  the  works  we  have  to  study. 
This  is  a  large,  poetic  tolerance  of  times  and  things 
which,  though  worthy  of  condemnation,  nevertheless 
appeal  to  our  sympathy  because  they  once  were  closely 


The  Development  of  Personality      207 

bound  with  our  fellow-men's  daily  life.  For  example, 
George  Eliot  writes  often  and  lovingly  about  the  England 
of  the  days  before  the  Reform  Bill,  the  careless,  pictur- 
esque, country-squire  England;  not  because  she  likes 
it,  or  thinks  it  better  than  the  England  of  the  present, 
but  with  much  the  same  feeUng  with  which  a  woman 
looks  at  the  ragged,  hob-nailed  shoes  of  her  boy  who  is 
gone,  —  a  boy  who  doubtless  was  often  rude  and  diso- 
bedient and  exasperating  to  the  last  degree,  but  who  was 
her  boy. 

^^  keen  insight  into  this  remarkable  combination  of 
the  poetic  tolerance  with  the  sternness  of  scientific 
accuracy  possessed  by  this  rem^rka^]?  ^C!I!l^ILr~  ^^^  ^^^^ 
remarkable  of  all  writers  in  this  respect,  we  should  say, 
except  Shakspere  —  is  offered  us  in  the  opening  lines  of 
the  first  chapter  of  her  first  story,  Amos  Barton.  (I  love 
to  look  at  this  wonderful  faculty  in  its  germ.)  The  chap- 
ter begins :  "  Shepperton  Church  was  a  very  different 
looking  building  five-and-twenty  years  ago.  .  .  .  Now 
there  is  a  wide  span  of  slated  roof  flanking  the  old 
steeple  ;  the  windows  are  tall  and  symmetrical ;  the  outer 
doors  are  resplendent  with  oak  graining,  the  inner  doors 
reverentially  noiseless  with  a  garment  of  red  baize ;  "  and 
we  have  a  minute  description  of  the  church  as  it  is. 
Then  we  have  this  turn  in  the  next  paragraph,  altogether 
wonderful  for  a  George  Eliot  who  has  been  translating 
Strauss  and  Feuerbach,  studying  physics,  Comtism  and 
the  like  among  the  London  agnostics,  a  fervent  disciple 
of  progress,  a  frequent  contributor  to  the  Westminster 
Review :  "  Immense  improvement !  says  the  well-regu- 
lated mind,  which  unintermittingly  rejoices  in  the  new 
police  .  .  .  the  penny-post,  and  all  guarantees  of  human 
advancement,  and  has  no  moments  when  conservative 
reforming  intellect  takes  a  nap,  whik  imagination  does  a 


2o8  The  English  Novel 

little  Toryism  by  the  sly,  revelling  in  regret  that  dear  old 
brown,  crumbling,  picturesque  inefficiency  is  everywhere 
giving  place  to  spick-and-span,  new-painted,  new-var- 
nished efficiency,  which  will  yield  endless  diagrams, 
plans,  elevations  and  sections,  but  alas !  no  picture. 
Mine,  I  fear,  is  not  a  well-regulated  mind :  it  has  an 
occasional  tenderness  for  old  abuses ;  it  lingers  with  a 
certain  fondness  over  the  days  of  nasal  clerks  and  top- 
booted  parsons,  and  has  a  sigh  for  the  departed  shades 
of  vulgar  errors."  And  it  is  worth  while,  if  even  for  an 
aside,  to  notice  in  the  same  passage  how  this  immense 
projection  of  herself  out  of  herself  into  what  we  may 
fairly  call  her  antipodes  is  not  only  a  matter  of  no 
strain,  but  from  the  very  beginning  is  accompanied  by 
that  eye-twinkle  between  the  lines  which  makes  much 
of  the  very  ruggedest  writing  of  George  Eliot's  like  a 
Virginia  fence  from  between  whose  rails  peep  wild  roses 
and  morning-glories. 

This  is  in  the  next  paragraph  where  after  thus  recall- 
ing the  outside  of  Shepperton  church  she  exclaims : 
**  Then  inside  what  dear  old  quaintnesses !  which  I 
began  to  look  at  with  delight  even  when  I  was  so  crude 
a  member  of  the  congregation  that  my  nurse  found  it 
necessary  to  provide  for  the  reinforcement  of  my  devo- 
tional patience  by  smuggling  bread  and  butter  into  the 
sacred  edifice."  Or,  a  few  Hues  before,  a  still  more 
characteristic  twinkle  of  the  eye  which  in  a  flash  carries 
our  thoughts  all  the  way  from  evolution  to  pure  fun,  when 
she  describes  the  organ-player  of  the  new  Shepperton 
church  as  a  rent- collector  *'  differentiated  by  force  of  cir- 
cumstances into  an  organist."  Apropos  of  this  use  of 
the  current  scientific  term  "differentiation,"  it  is  worth 
while  noting,  as  we  pass,  an  instance  of  the  extreme 
vagueness    and   caprice   of   current  modern   criticism. 


The  Development  of  Personality      209 

When  George  Eliot's  Daniel  Deronda  was  printed  in 
1876,  one  of  the  most  complacent  English  reviews  criti- 
cised her  expression  "dynamic  power  of"  a  woman's 
glance,  which  occurs  in  her  first  picture  of  Gwendolen 
Harleth,  as  an  inappropriate  use  of  scientific  phraseology ; 
and  was  immediately  followed  by  a  chorus  of  small  voices 
discussing  the  matter  with  much  minute  learning,  rather 
as  evidence  of  George  Eliot's  decline  from  proper  artis- 
tic style.  But  here,  as  you  have  just  seen,  in  the  very 
first  chapter  of  her  iirst  story,  written  twenty  years 
before,  scientific  "  differentiation  "  is  made  to  work  very 
effectively ;  and  a  few  pages  further  on  we  have  an  even 
more  striking  instance  in  this  passage  :  "  This  allusion  to 
brandy-and-water  suggested  to  Miss  Gibbs  the  introduc- 
tion of  the  liquor  decanters  now  that  the  tea  was  cleared 
away ;  for  in  bucolic  society  five-and-twenty  years  ago 
the  human  animal  of  the  male  sex  was  understood  to  be 
perpetually  athirst,  and  'something  to  drink'  was  as 
necessary  a  '  condition  of  thought '  as  Time  and  Space." 
Other  such  happy  uses  of  scientific  phrases  occur  indeed 
throughout  the  whole  of  these  first  three  stories  and 
form  an  integral  part  of  that  ever-brooding  humor  which 
fills  with  a  quiet  light  all  the  darkest  stories  of  George 
Eliot. 

Oii  the  other  hand,  it  is  in  strong  contrast  that  we 
find  her  co-laborer,  Dickens,  always  growing  furious 
(as  his  biographer  describes),  when  the  ante-reform 
days  are  mentioned,  those  days  of  rotten  boroughs, 
when,  as  Lord  John  Russell  said,  "a  ruined  mound 
sent  two  representatives  to  Parliament,  three  niches  in  a 
stone  wall  sent  three  representatives  to  Parliament,  and 
a  park  where  no  houses  were  to  be  seen  sent  two  repre- 
sentatives to  Parliament."  While  George  Eliot  is  indulg- 
ing in  the  tender  recollections  of  picturesqueness  etc., 

14 


2IO  The  English  Novel 

just  given,  Dickens  is  writing  savage  versions  of  the  old 
ballad,  The  Fine  Old  English  Gentleman^  in  which  he 
fiercely  satirizes  the  old,  Tory  England. 

"  I'll  sing  you  a  new  ballad  "  (he  cries),  "  and  111  warrant  it  first- 
rate, 
Of  the  days  of  that  old  gentleman  who  had  that  old  estate ; 

"  The  good  old  laws  were  garnished  well  with  gibbets,  whips,  and 

chains, 
With  fine  old  English  penalties  and  fine  old  English  pains. 
With  rebel  heads  and  seas  of  blood  once  hot  in  rebel  veins : 
For  all  these  things  were  requisite  to  guard  the  rich  old  gains 
Of  the  fine  old  English  Tory  times ; 
Soon  may  they  come  again  ! 

"  The  good  old  times  for  cutting  throats  that  cried  out  in  their  need, 
The  good  old  times  for  hunting  men  who  held  their  father's  creed. 
The  good  old  times  when  William  Pitt,  as  all  good  men  agreed. 
Came  down  direct  from  Paradise  at  more  than  railroad  speed. . . . 
Oh,  the  fine  old  English  Tory  times ; 
When  will  they  come  again ! 

"  In  those  rare  days  the  press  was  seldom  known  to  snarl  or  bark, 
But  sweetly  sang  of  men  in  pow'r  like  any  tuneful  lark ; 
Grave  judges,  too,  to  all  their  evil  deeds  were  in  the  dark ; 
And  not  a  man  in  twenty  score  knew  how  to  make  his  mark. 
Oh,  the  fine  old  English  Tory  times, 
Soon  may  they  come  again !  .  .  . " 


In  a  word,  the  difference  between  Dickens's  and  George 
Eliot's  powers  is  here  typified  :  Dickens  tends  toward 
the  satiric  or  destructive  view  of  the  old  times ;  George 
Eliot,  with  an  even  more  burning  intolerance  of  the 
essential  evil,  takes  on  the  other  hand  the  loving  or 
constructive  view.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  George 
Eliot's  work,  as  a  whole,  is  so  much  finer  than  some  of 
Dickens's.     The  great  artist  never  can  work  in  haste, 


The  Development  of  Personality      211 

never  in  malice,  never  in  even  the  sub-acid,  satiric  mood 
of  Thackeray :  in  love,  and  love  only,  can  great  work, 
work  that  not  only  pulls  down  but  builds  up,  be  done ;  it 
is  love,  and  love  only,  that  is  truly  constructive  in  art. 

And  here  it  seems  profitable  to  contrast  George  Eliot's 
peculiar  endowment  as  shown  in  these  first  stories  with 
that  of  Thackeray.  Thackeray  was  accustomed  to  lament 
that  "  since  the  author  of  Tom  Jones  was  buried  no 
writer  of  fiction  among  us  has  been  permitted  to  depict 
to  his  utmost  powers  a  man.  .  .  .  Society  will  not 
tolerate  the  natural  in  art."  Under  this  yearning  of 
Thackeray's  after  the  supposed  freedom  of  Fielding's 
time  lie  at  once  a  short-coming  of  love,  a  limitation  of 
view  and  an  actual  fallacy  of  logic  which  always  kept 
Thackeray's  work  below  the  highest,  anc^  which  formed 
the  chief  reason  why  I  have  been  unable  to  place  him 
here,  along  with  Dickens  and  George  Eliot.  This  short- 
coming and  limitation  still  exist  in  our  literature  and 
criticism  to  such  an  extent  that  I  can  do  no  better  ser- 
vice than  by  asking  you  to  examine  them.  And  I  think 
I  can  illustrate  the  whole  in  the  shortest  manner  by 
some  considerations  drawn  from  that  familiar  wonder  of 
our  times,  the  daily  newspaper.  Consider  the  printed 
matter  which  is  brought  daily  to  your  breakfast  table. 
The  theory  of  the  daily  paper  is  that  it  is  the  history  of 
the  world  for  one  day :  and  let  me  here  at  once  connect 
this  illustration  with  the  general  argument  by  saying 
that  Thackeray  and  his  school,  when  they  speak  of  draw- 
ing a  man  as  he  is  —  of  the  natural,  etc.,  in  art  —  would 
mean  drawing  a  man  as  he  appears  in  such  a  history  as 
the  daily  newspaper  gives  us.  But  let  us  test  this  his- 
tory :  let  us  examine,  for  instance,  the  telegraphic 
column  in  the  morning  journal.  I  have  made  a  faithful 
transcript  on  the  morning  of  this  writing  of  every  item 


212  The  English  Novel 

in  the  news  summary  involving  the  moral  relation  of 
man  to  man ;  the  result  is  as  follows  :  one  item  concern- 
ing the  assassination  of  the  Czar;  the  recent  war  with 
the  Boers  in  Africa;  the  quarrel  between  Turkey  and 
Greece;  the  rebellion  in  Armenia;  the  trouble  about 
Candahar ;  of  a  workman  in  a  lumber-camp  in  Michigan, 
who  shot  and  killed  his  wife,  twenty- two  years  old,  yes- 
terday ;  of  the  confession  of  a  man  just  taken  from  the 
West  Virginia  penitentiary  to  having  murdered  an  old 
man  in  Michigan,  three  years  ago;  of  the  suicide  of 
Mrs.  Scott  at  Williamstown,  Mississippi;  of  the  kiUing 
of  King  by  Clark  in  a  fight  in  Logan  county,  Kentucky, 
on  Sunday;  of  how,  about  lo  o'clock  last  night,  a  cer- 
tain John  Cram  was  called  to  the  door  of  his  house 
near  Chicago  and  shot  dead  by  William  Seymour; 
of  how  young  Mohr,  thirteen  years  of  age,  died  at  the 
Charity  Hospital  in  Jersey  City  yesterday,  from  the 
effects  of  a  beating  by  his  father ;  of  how  young  Clasby 
was  arrested  at  Richmond,  Virginia,  for  stealing  letters 
out  of  the  mail  bag ;  of  how  the  miners  of  the  Connells- 
ville,  Pennsylvania  coke  regions,  the  journeyman  bakers 
of  Montreal,  Canada,  the  rubber-workers  of  New  Bruns- 
wick, New  Jersey,  and  the  Journeyman  Tailors'  Union 
in  Cincinnati,  are  all  about  to  strike ;  and  finally,  of  how 
James  Tolen,  an  insane  wife-murderer,  committed  suicide 
in  Minnesota  yesterday,  by  choking  himself  with  a 
twisted  sheet.  These  are  all  the  items  involving  the 
moral  relations  of  man  to  man  contained  in  the  history 
of  the  world  for  Tuesday,  March  2  2d,  1881,  as  given  by 
a  journal  noted  for  the  extent  and  accuracy  of  its  daily 
collection. 

Let  us  suppose  a  picture  were  drawn  of  the  moral  con- 
dition of  the  United  States  from  these  data  :  how  nearly 
would  it  represent  the  facts?    This  so-called  **  history  of 


The  Development  of  Personality      213 

the  world  for  one  day,"  if  you  closely  examine  it,  turns 
out  to  be,  you  observe,  only  a  history  of  the  world's 
crimes  for  one  day.  The  world's  virtues  do  not  appear. 
It  is  true  that  Patrick  Kelly  murdered  his  wife  yesterday  : 
but  then  how  many  Kellys  who  came  home  tired  from 
work  and  found  the  wife  drunk  and  the  children  crying 
for  bread,  instead  of  murdering  the  whole  family,  with  a 
rugged  sigh  drew  the  beastly  woman's  form  into  one 
corner,  fumbled  about  the  poor,  dirty  cupboard  in 
another  for  crusts  of  bread,  fed  the  crying  youngsters 
after  some  rude  fashion  and  finally  lay  down  with  dumb 
heaviness  to  sleep  off  the  evil  of  that  day.  It  is  true  that 
Jones,  the  bank  clerk,  was  yesterday  exposed  in  a  series 
of  defalcations  :  but  how  many  thousands  of  bank  clerks 
on  that  same  day  resisted  the  strongest  temptations  to 
false  entries  and  the  allurements  of  private  stock  specu- 
lations. It  is  true  that  yesterday  Mrs.  Lighthead  eloped 
with  the  music-teacher,  leaving  six  children  and  a  desolate 
husband  :  but  how  many  thousands  of  Mrs.  Heavyhearts 
spent  the  same  day  in  nursing  some  drunken  husband, 
who  had  long  ago  forfeited  all  love ;  how  many  Milly 
Bartons  were  darning  six  children's  stockings  at  five 
o'clock  of  that  morning ;  nay,  what  untold  millions  of 
faithful  women  made  this  same  day  a  sort  of  paradise 
for  husband  and  children.  And  finally  you  have  but  to 
consider  a  moment  that  if  it  lay  within  the  power  of 
the  diligent  collector  of  items  for  the  Associated  Press 
despatches  to  gather  together  the  virtuous,  rather  than 
the  criminal,  actions  of  mankind,  the  virtuous  would  so 
far  exceed  the  criminal  as  that  no  journal  would  find 
columns  enough  to  print  them  in,  so  as  to  put  a  wholly 
different  complexion  upon  matters.  The  use  of  this 
newspaper  illustration  in  my  present  argument  is  this : 
I  complain  that  Thackeray,  and  the  Fielding  school,  in 


214  'T'he  English  Novel 

professing  to  paint  men  as  they  are,  really  paint  men 
only  as  they  appear  in  some  such  necessarily  one-sided 
representations  as  the  newspaper  history  just  described. 
And  it  is  perfectly  characteristic  of  the  inherent  weak- 
ness of  Thackeray  that  he  should  so  utterly  fail  to  see 
the  true  significance  underlying  society's  repudiation  of 
his  proposed  natural  picture.  The  least  that  such  a 
repudiation  could  mean,  would  be  that  even  if  the  picture 
were  good  in  Fielding's  time,  it  is  bad  now.  It  is  beau- 
tiful, therefore,  remembering  Thackeray's  great  influence 
at  the  time  when  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  were  written, 
to  find  a  woman,  George  Eliot,  departing  utterly  out  of 
that  mood  of  hate  or  even  of  acidulous  satire  in  which 
Thackeray  so  often  worked  —  and  in  which,  one  may 
add,  the  world  is  seldom  benefited,  however  skillful  the 
work  may  be  —  departing  from  all  that,  deftly  painting 
for  us  these  pathetic  Milly  Bartons,  and  Mr.  Gilfils,  and 
Janet  Dempsters,  and  Rev.  Tryans,  and  arranging  the 
whole  into  a  picture  which  becomes  epic  because  it  is 
filled  with  the  reverend  struggles  of  human  personali- 
ties, dressed  in  whatever  russet  garb,  of  clothing  or  of 
circumstances. 

Those  who  were  at  my  first  lecture  on  George  Eliot 
will  remember  that  we  found  the  editor  of  Blackwood^ s 
Magazine y  on  a  certain  autumn  night  in  1856,  reading 
part  of  the  MS.  of  Amos  Barton  in  his  drawing-room  to 
Thackeray,  and  remarking  to  Thackeray,  who  had  just 
come  in  late  from  dinner,  that  he  had  come  upon  a  new 
author  who  seemed  uncommonly  like  a  first-class  pas- 
senger; it  is  significantly  related  that  Thackeray  said 
nothing,  and  evinced  no  further  interest  in  it  than  civilly 
to  say,  sometime  afterward,  that  he  would  have  liked  to 
hear  more  of  it.  In  the  light  of  the  contrast  I  have  just 
drawn  Thackeray's  failure  to  be  impressed  seems  natural 


The  Development  of  Personality      215 

enough,  and  becomes  indeed  all  the  more  impressive 
when  we  compare  it  with  the  enthusiastic  praise  which 
Charles  Dickens  lavished  upon  this  same  work  in  the 
letter  which  you  will  remember  I  read  from  him. 

And  here  I  come  upon  a  further  contrast  between 
George  Eliot  and  Dickens  which  I  should  be  glad  now 
to  bring  out  as  clearly  appearing  in  these  first  three 
Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  before  Adam  Bede  was  written. 

This  is  herexquisite  modernness  in  that  intense  feel- 
ing  for  personality  which  I  developed  with  so  much 
caire  in  mjTfirst  six  lectures,  and  her  exquisite  scientific 
precision  in  pjacm^^  the  persoiialities  or  characters  of  her 
works  before  the  reader. 

Ail  the  world  knows  how  Dickens  puts  a  personality 
on  his  canvas :  he  always  gives  us  a  vividly  descriptive 
line  of  facial  curve,  of  dress,  of  form,  of  gesture  and  the 
like,  which  distinguishes  a  given  character.  Whenever 
we  see  this  line  we  know  the  character  so  well  that  we 
are  perfectly  content  that  two  rings  for  the  eyes,  a  spot 
for  the  nose  and  a  blur  for  the  body  may  represent  the 
rest  j  and  we  accept  always  with  joy  the  rich  mirthful- 
ness  or  pathetic  matter  with  which  Dickens's  large  soul 
manages  to  invest  such  hastily  drawn  figures.  George 
Eliot's  principle  and  method  are  completely  opposite ; 
at  the  time  of  her  first  stories  which  we  are  now  consid- 
ering they  were  unique ;  and  the  quietness  with  which 
she  made  a  real  epoch  in  all  character- description  is 
simply  characteristic  of  the  quietness  of  all  her  work. 
She  showed  for  the  first  time  that  without  approaching 
dangerously  near  to  caricature,  as  Dickens  was  often 
obliged  to  do,  a  lovable  creature  of  actual  flesh  and 
blood  could  be  drawn  in  a  novel  with  all  the  advantage 
of  completeness  derivable  from  microscopic  analysis, 
scientific  precision,  and  moral  intent;  and  with  abso- 


2i6  The  English  Novel 

lutely  none  of  the  disadvantages,  such  as  coldness,  dead- 
ness  and  the  like,  which  had  caused  all  sorts  of  mere- 
tricious arts  to  be  adopted  by  novelists  in  order  to  save 
the  naturalness  of  a  character. 

A  couple  of  brief  expressions  from  JaneVs  Repen- 
tance, the  third  of  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life,  show  how 
intensely  George  Eliot  felt  upon  this  matter.  At  the 
end  of  Chapter  X  of  that  remarkable  story  she  says : 
"Our  subtlest  analysis  of  schools  and  sects  must  miss 
the  essential  truth  unless  it  be  lit  up  by  the  love  that 
sees  in  all  forms  of  human  thought  and  work  the  life- 
and-death  struggles  of  separate  human  beings."  And 
again  in  Chapter  XXII :  "  Emotion,  I  fear,  is  obstinately 
irrational :  it  insists  on  caring  for  individuals ;  it  abso- 
lutely refuses  to  adopt  the  quantitative  view  of  human 
anguish,  and  to  admit  that  thirteen  happy  lives  are 
a  set-off  against  twelve  miserable  lives,"  leaving  "a 
clear  balance  on  the  side  of  satisfaction.  .  .  .  One  must 
be  a  great  philosopher,"  she  adds,  sardonically,  "to 
have  emerged  into  the  serene  air  of  pure  intellect  in 
which  it  is  evident  that  individuals  really  exist  for  no 
other  purpose  than  that  abstractions  may  be  drawn  from 
them :  "  (which  is  dangerously  near,  by  the  way,  to  a 
complete  formula  of  the  Emersonian  doctrine  which 
I  had  occasion  to  quote  in  my  last  lecture) .  She  con- 
tinues :  "  And  so  it  comes  to  pass  that  for  the  man  who 
knows  sympathy  because  he  has  known  sorrow,  that  old, 
old  saying,  about  the  joy  of  angels  over  the  repentant 
sinner  out-weighing  their  joy  over  the  ninety-nine  just, 
has  a  meaning  that  does  not  jar  with  the  language  of 
his  own  heart.  It  only  tells  him  that  for  angels  too 
there  is  a  transcendent  value  in  human  pain  which  refuses 
to  be  settled  by  equations ;  .  .  .  that  for  angels  too  the 
misery  of  one  casts  so  tremendous  a  shadow  as  to  eclipse 


The  Development  of  Personality      217 

the  bliss  of  ninety-nine."  The  beautiful  personality  who 
suggests  this  remark  is  Janet  Dempster,  the  heroine  of 
Janet's  Repentance :  a  tall,  grand,  beautiful  girl  who  has 
married  the  witty  Lawyer  Dempster  and  who,  after  a 
bitter  married  hfe  of  some  years  in  which  Dempster 
finally  begins  amusing  himself  by  beating  her,  has  come 
to  share  the  customary  wine  decanter  at  table,  and  thus 
by  insensible  degrees  to  acquire  the  habit  of  taking 
wine  against  trouble.  Presently  a  terrible  catastrophe 
occurs;  she  is  thrust  out  of  doors  barefooted  at  mid- 
night, half  clad,  by  her  brutal  husband,  and  told  never 
to  return.  Finding  lodgment  with  a  friend  next  day  a 
whirlwind  of  necessity  for  complete  spiritual  re -adjust- 
ment shakes  her.  "She  was  sick,"  says  George  Eliot, 
"  of  that  barren  exhortation,  *  Do  right  and  keep  a  clear 
conscience  and  God  will  reward  you,  etc'  She  wanted 
strength  to  do  right; "  and  at  this  point  the  thought  of 
Tryan,  an  unorthodox  clergyman  who  had  made  a  great 
stir  in  the  village  and  whom  she  had  been  taught  to  despise, 
occurs  to  her.  "  She  had  often  heard  Mr.  Tryan  laughed 
at  for  being  fond  of  great  sinners ;  she  began  to  see  a 
new  meaning  in  those  words ;  he  would  perhaps  under- 
stand her  helplessness.  If  she  could  pour  out  her  heart 
to  him  ! "  Then  here  we  have  this  keen  glimpse  into 
some  curious  relations  of  personality.  "  The  impulse  to 
confession  almost  always  requires  the  presence  of  a  fresh 
ear  and  a  fresh  heart ;  and  in  our  moments  of  spiritual 
need  the  man  to  whom  we  have  no  tie  but  our  common 
nature  seems  nearer  to  us  than  mother,  brother  or  friend. 
Our  daily,  familiar  life  is  but  a  hiding  of  ourselves  from 
each  other  behind  a  screen  of  trivial  words  and  deeds, 
and  those  who  sit  with  us  at  the  same  hearth  are  often 
the  farthest  off  from  the  deep  human  soul  within  us,  full 
of  unspoken  evil  and  unacted  good."     Nor  can  I  ever 


21 8  The  English  Novel 

read  the  pathetic  scene  in  which  Janet  secures  peace  for 
her  spirit  and  a  practicable  working- theory  for  the  rest 
of  her  active  Ufe,  without  somehow  being  reminded  of  the 
second  scene  in  Mrs.  Browning's  Drama  of  Exile,  prodig- 
iously different  as  that  is  from  this  in  all  external  set- 
ting :  —  the  scene  where  the  figures  of  Adam  and  Eve 
are  discovered  at  the  extremity  of  the  sword-glare,  flying 
from  Eden,  and  Adam  begins : 

"  Pausing  a  moment  on  the  outer  edge, 
Where  the  supernal  sword-glare  cuts  in  light 
The  dark  exterior  desert,  —  hast  thou  strength, 
Beloved,  to  look  behind  us  to  the  gate  ? 
Eve.    Have  I  not  strength  to  look  up  to  thy  face  ?  '* 

This  Story  oi  JaneVs  Repentance  offers  us,  by  the  way, 
a  strong  note  of  modernness  as  between  George  Eliot 
and  Shakspere.  Shakspere  has  never  drawn,  so  far  as  I 
know,  a  repentance  of  any  sort.  Surely,  in  the  whole  range 
of  our  life  no  phenomenon  can  take  more  powerful  hold 
upon  the  attention  of  the  thinker  than  that  of  a  human 
spirit  suddenly,  of  its  own  free-will,  turning  the  whole 
current  of  its  love  and  desire  from  a  certain  direction 
into  a  direction  entirely  opposite  :  so  that  from  a  small 
spiteful  creature,  enamored  with  all  ugliness,  we  have  a 
large,  generous  spirit,  filled  with  the  love  of  true  love. 
In  looking  upon  such  a  sight  one  seems  to  be  startlingly 
near  to  the  essential  mystery  of  personality  —  to  that 
hidden  fountain  of  power  not  preceded,  power  not  con- 
ditioned, which  probably  gives  man  his  only  real  con- 
ception of  Divine  power,  or  power  acting  for  itself.  It 
would  be  wonderful  that  the  subtleties  of  human  passion 
comprehended  in  the  situation  of  repentance  had  not 
attracted  Shakspere's  imagination  if  one  did  not  remem- 
ber that  the  developing  personality  of  man  was  then 
only  coming  into  literature.     The  only  apparent  change 


The  Development  of  Personality     219 

of  character  of  this  sort  in  Shakspere  which  I  recall  is 
that  of  the  young  king  Henry  V  leaving  Falstaff  and 
his  other  gross  companions  for  the  steadier  matters  of 
war  and  government ;  but  the  soliloquy  of  Prince  Hal 
in  the  very  first  act  of  King  Henry  IV  precludes  all 
idea  of  repentance  here,  by  showing  that  at  the  outset 
his  heart  is  not  in  the  jolly  pranks,  but  that  he  is  calcu- 
latingly ambitious  from  the  beginning;  and  his  whole 
apparent  dissipation  is  but  a  scheme  to  enhance  his 
future  glory.  In  the  first  act  of  Henry  IV  (first  part), 
when  the  plot  is  made  to  rob  the  carriers,  at  the  end  of 
Scene  II,  exeunt  all  but  Prince  Hal,  who  soliloquizes 
thus; 

"  I  know  you  all,  and  will  awhile  uphold 
The  unyoked  humor  of  your  idleness : 
Yet  herein  will  I  imitate  the  sun, 
Who  doth  permit  the  base  contagious  clouds 
To  smother  up  his  beauty  from  the  world 
That,  when  he  please  again  to  be  himself, 
Being  wanted,  he  may  be  more  wondered  at 
By  breaking  through  the  foul  and  ugly  mists 
Of  vapors  that  did  seem  to  strangle  him. 
...  So  when  this  loose  behaviour  I  throw  off 
And  pay  the  debt  I  never  promised, 
By  how  much  better  than  my  word  I  am 
By  so  much  shall  I  falsify  men's  hopes ; 
And,  like  bright  metal  on  a  sullen  ground, 
My  reformation,  glittering  o'er  my  fault. 
Shall  show  more  goodly  and  attract  more  eyes 
Than  that  which  had  no  foil  to  set  it  off. 
I'll  so  offend  to  make  offense  a  skill. 
Redeeming  time  when  men  think  least  I  will." 

Here  the  stream  of  his  love  is  from  the  beginning  and 
always  towards  ambition  ;  there  is  never  any  turn  at  all ; 
and  Prince  Hal's  assumption  of  the  grace  reformation, 
as  applied  to  such  a  career  of  deliberate  acting,  is  merely 
a  piece  of  naive  complacency. 


220  The  English  Novel 

Let  us  now  go  further  and  say  that  with  this  reverence 
for  personahty  as  to  the  ultimate  important  fact  of  human 
existence  George  Eliot  wonderfully  escapes  certain  com- 
plexities due  to  the  difference  between  what  a  man  is, 
really,  and  what  he  seems  to  be  to  his  fellows.  Perhaps 
I  may  most  easily  specify  these  complexities  by  asking 
you  to  recall  the  scene  in  one  of  Dr.  Holmes's  Breakfast- 
Table  series,  where  the  Professor  laboriously  expounds 
to  the  young  man  called  John  that  there  are  really  three 
of  him,  to  wit :  John  as  he  appears  to  his  neighbors, 
John  as  he  appears  to  himself,  and  John  as  he  really  is. 

In  George  Eliot's  Theophrastus  Such  one  finds  ex- 
plicit mention  of  the  trouble  that  had  been  caused  to 
her  by  two  of  these :  "  With  all  possible  study  of  my- 
self," she  says  in  the  first  chapter  ..."  I  am  obliged  to 
recognize  that  while  there  are  secrets  in  me  unguessed 
by  others  these  others  have  certain  items  of  knowledge 
about  the  extent  of  my  powers  and  the  figure  I  make 
with  them  which,  in  turn,  are  secrets  unguessed  by  me. 
.  .  .  Thus  .  .  .  O  fellow-men !  if  I  trace  with  curious 
interest  your  labyrinthine  self-delusions  ...  it  is  not 
that  I  feel  myself  aloof  from  you  :  the  more  intimately  I 
seem  to  discern  your  weaknesses  the  stronger  to  me  is  the 
proof  I  share  them.  ...  No  man  can  know  his  brother 
simply  as  a  spectator.  Dear  blunderers,  I  am  one  of 
you." 

Perhaps  nothing  less  than  this  underlying  reverence 
for  all  manner  of  personality  could  have  produced  this 
first  chapter  of  Adam  Bede,  "  With  this  drop  of  ink," 
she  says  at  starting,  "  I  will  show  you  the  roomy  work- 
shop of  Mr.  Jonathan  Burge,  carpenter  and  builder  in 
the  village  of  Hayslope,  as  it  appeared  on  the  i8th  of 
June,  in  the  year  of  our  Lord  1799."  I  can  never  read 
this  opening  of  the   famous  carpenter's  shop  without 


The  Development  of  Personality      221 

indulging  myself  for  a  moment  in  the  wish  that  this 
same  marvelous  eye  might  have  dwelt  upon  a  certain 
carpenter's  shop  I  wot  of,  on  some  i8th  of  June,  in  the 
year  of  our  Lord  25.  What  would  we  not  give  for  such 
a  picture  of  the  work-shop  of  that  master-builder  and 
of  the  central  figure  in  it  as  is  here  given  us  of  the 
old  English  room  ringing  with  the  song  of  Adam  Bede. 
Perhaps  we  could  come  upon  no  clearer  proof  of  that 
modemness  of  personality  which  I  have  been  advocating 
than  this  very  fact  of  our  complete  ignorance  as  to  the 
physical  person  of  Christ.  One  asks  one's  self,  how 
comes  it  never  to  have  occurred  to  St.  Matthew,  nor  St. 
Mark,  nor  St.  Luke,  nor  St.  John  to  tell  us  what  manner 
of  man  this  was,  —  what  stature,  what  complexion,  what 
color  of  eye  and  hair,  what  shape  of  hand  and  foot.  A 
natural  instinct  arising  at  the  very  outset  of  the  descrip- 
tive effort  would  have  caused  a  modern  to  acquaint  us 
with  these  and  many  like  particulars. 

It  is  advancing  upon  the  same  line  of  thought  to  note 
that  here,  in  this  opening  of  Adam  BedCy  not  only  are 
the  men  marked  off  and  differentiated  for  our  physical 
eye  but  the  very  first  personality  described  is  that  of 
a  dog,  and  this  is  subtly  done.  "  On  a  heap  of  soft 
shavings  a  rough  gray  shepherd- dog  had  made  himself 
a  pleasant  bed,  and  was  lying  with  his  nose  between  his 
fore-paws,  occasionally  wrinkling  his  brows  to  cast  a 
glance  at  the  tallest  of  the  five  workmen,  who  was  carv- 
ing a  shield  in  the  centre  of  a  wooden  mantel-piece.'* 
This  dog  is  our  friend  Gyp,  who  emerges  on  several 
occasions  through  Adam  Bede.  Gyp  is  only  one  of  a 
number  of  genuine  creations  in  animal  character  which 
show  the  modernness  of  George  Eliot  and  Charles 
Dickens,  and  make  them  especially  dear.  How,  indeed, 
could  society  get  along  without   that   famous   cock   in 


222  The  English  Novel 

Adam  Bede^  who,  as  George  Eliot  records,  was  accus- 
tomed to  crow  as  if  the  sun  was  rising  on  purpose  to 
hear  him  !  And  I  wish  here  to  place  upon  the  roll  oi 
fame,  also,  a  certain  cock  who  entered  literature  about 
this  time  in  a  series  of  delicious  papers  called  Shy  Neigh- 
borhoods, In  these  Charles  Dickens  gave  some  account, 
among  many  other  notable  but  unnoted  things,  of  several 
families  of  fowls  in  which  he  had  become  —  as  it  were 
—  intimate  during  his  walks  about  outlying  London. 
One  of  these  was  a  reduced  family  of  Bantams  whom  he 
was  accustomed  to  find  crowding  together  in  the  side 
entry  of  a  pawnbroker's  shop.  Another  was  a  family 
of  Dorkings  who  regularly  spent  their  evenings  in  some- 
what riotous  company  at  a  certain  tavern  near  the  Hay- 
market,  and  seldom  went  to  bed  before  two  in  the 
morning. 

My  particular  immortal,  however,  was  a  member  of  the 
following  family  :  I  quote  from  Dickens,  here  :  —  "  But 
the  family  I  am  best  acquainted  with  reside  in  the  densest 
parts  of  Bethnal-Green.  Their  abstraction  from  the 
objects  amongst  which  they  live,  or  rather  their  convic- 
tion that  those  objects  have  all  come  into  existence  in 
express  subservience  to  fowls  has  so  enchanted  me  that 
I  have  made  them  the  subject  of  many  journeys  at 
divers  hours.  .  .  .  '  The  leading  lady  '  is  an  aged  person- 
age afflicted  with  a  paucity  of  feather  and  visibility  of 
quill  that  give  her  the  appearance  of  a  bundle  of  office- 
pens.  When  a  railway  goods-van  that  would  crush  an 
elephant  comes  round  the  comer,  tearing  over  these 
fowls,  they  emerge  unharmed  from  under  the  horses 
perfectly  satisfied  that  the  whole  rush  was  a  passing 
property  in  the  air  which  may  have  left  something  to  eat 
behind  it.  They  look  upon  old  shoes,  wrecks  of  kettles 
and  saucepans,  and  fragments  of  bonnets  as  a  kind  of 


The  Development  of  Personality      223 

meteoric  discharge  for  fowls  to  peck  at.  .  . .  Gaslight  comes 
quite  as  natural  to  them  as  any  other  light ;  and  I  have 
more  than  a  suspicion  that  in  the  minds  of  the  two  lords, 
the  early  public-house  at  the  corner  has  superseded  the 
sun.  They  always  begin  to  crow  when  the  public-house 
shutters  begin  to  be  taken  down ;  and  they  salute  the 
Pot-boy  when  he  appears  to  perform  that  duty  as 
if  he  were  Phcebus  in  person."  And  alongside  these 
two  cocks  I  must  place  a  hen  whom  1  find  teaching  a 
wise  and  beautiful  lesson  to  the  last  man  in  the  world 
you  would  suspect  as  accessible  to  influences  from  any 
such  direction.  This  was  Thomas  Carlyle.  Among  his 
just-published  Reminiscences  I  find  the  following  entry 
from  the  earlier  dyspeptic  times,  which  seems  impossible 
when  we  remember  the  well-known  story  —  true,  as  I 
know  —  how,  after  Thomas  Carlyle  and  his  wife  had  set- 
tled at  Chelsea,  London,  and  the  crowing  of  the  neigh- 
borhood cocks  had  long  kept  him  in  martyrdom,  Mrs. 
Carlyle  planned  and  carried  out  the  most  brilliant  cam- 
paign of  her  life,  in  the  course  of  which  she  succeeded 
in  purchasing  or  otherwise  suppressing  every  cock  within 
hearing  distance.     But  this  entry  is  long  before  : 

"  Another  morning,  what  was  vvholesomer  and  better, 
happening  to  notice,  as  I  stood  looking  out  on  the  bit 
of  green  under  my  bedroom  window,  a  trim  and  rather 
pretty  hen  actively  paddling  about  and  picking  up  what 
food  might  be  discoverable,  'See,'  I  said  to  myself; 
'  look,  thou  fool !  Here  is  a  two-legged  creature  with 
scarcely  half  a  thimbleful  of  poor  brains ;  thou  call'st 
thyself  a  man  with  nobody  knows  how  much  brain,  and 
reason  dwelling  in  it ;  and  behold  how  the  one  life  is 
regulated  and  how  the  other  !  In  God's  name  concen- 
trate, collect  whatever  of  reason  thou  hast,  and  direct  it  on 
the  one  thing  needful'     Irving,  when  we  did  get  into 


224  rhe  English  Novel 

intimate  dialogue,  was  affectionate  to  me  as  ever,  and  had 
always  to  the  end  a  great  deal  of  sense  and  insight  into 
things  about  him,  but  he  could  not  much  help  me ;  how 
could  anybody  but  myself?  By  degrees  I  was  doing  so, 
taking  counsel  of  that  syftibolic  HEN." 

In  George  Eliot  all  the  domestic  animals  are  true 
neighbors  and  are  brought  within  the  Master's  exhorta- 
tion :  "  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself,"  by  the 
tenderness  and  deep  humor  with  which  she  treats  them. 
This  same  Gyp,  who  is  honored  with  first  place  among  the 
characters  described  in  the  carpenter's  shop,  is  contin- 
ually doing  something  charming  throughout  Adam  Bede. 
In  Janet's  Repentance  dear  old  Mr.  Jerome  comes  down 
the  road  on  his  roan  mare,  "  shaking  the  bridle  and 
tickling  her  flank  with  the  whip  as  usual,  though  there 
was  a  perfect  mutual  understanding  that  she  was  not  to 
quicken  her  pace ;  "  and  everywhere  I  find  those  touches 
of  true  sympathy  with  the  dumb  brutes,  such  as  only 
earnest  souls  or  great  geniuses  are  capable  of. 

Somehow  —  I  cannot  now  remember  how  —  a  picture 
was  fastened  upon  my  mind  in  childhood  which  I  always 
recall  with  pleasure :  it  is  the  figure  of  man  emerging 
from  the  dark  of  barbarism  attended  by  his  friends  the 
horse,  the  cow,  the  chicken  and  the  dog.  George  Eliot's 
animal  painting  brings  always  this  picture  before  me. 

In  April,  i860,  appeared  George  Eliot's  second  great 
novel.  The  Mill  on  the  Floss.  This  book,  in  some  re- 
spects otherwise  her  greatest  work,  possesses  a  quite 
extraordinary  interest  for  us  now  in  the  circumstance 
that  a  large  number  of  traits  in  the  description  of  the 
heroine,  Maggie  TuUiver,  are  unquestionably  traits  of 
George  Eliot  herself,  and  the  autobiographic  character 
of  the  book  has  been  avowed  by  her  best  friends.  I  pro- 
pose therefore  in  the  next  lecture  to  read  some  pas- 


The  Development  of  Personality      225 

sages  from  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  in  which  I  may 
have  the  pleasure  of  letting  this  great  soul  speak  for 
herself  with  little  comment  from  me,  except  that  I  wish 
to  compare  the  figure  of  Maggie  Tulliver,  specially,  with 
that  of  Aurora  Leigh,  in  the  light  of  the  remarkable 
development  of  womanhood,  both  in  real  life  and  in  fic- 
tion, which  arrays  itself  before  us  when  we  think  only  of 
what  we  may  call  the  Victorian  women :  that  is,  of  the 
Queen  herself.  Sister  Dora,  Florence  Nightingale,  Ida,  in 
Tennyson's  Princess,  Jane  Eyre,  Charlotte  Bronte  and 
her  sisters,  Mrs.  Browning,  with  her  Eve  and  Catarina 
and  Aurora  Leigh,  and  George  Eliot,  with  her  creations. 
I  shall  thus  make  a  much  more  extensive  study  of  The 
Mill  on  the  Floss  than  of  either  of  the  four  works  which 
preceded  it.  It  is  hard  to  leave  Adam  Bede,  and  Dinah 
Morris  and  Bartle  Massey,  and  Mrs.  Poyser,  but  I  must 
select;  and  I  have  thought  this  particularly  profitable 
because  no  criticism  that  I  have  yet  seen  of  George  Eliot 
does  the  least  justice  to  the  enormous,  the  simply  unique 
equipment  with  which  she  comes  into  English  fiction,  or 
in  the  least  prepares  the  reader  for  those  extraordinary 
revolutions  which  she  has  wrought  with  such  demure 
quietness  that  unless  pointed  out  by  some  diligent  pro- 
fessional student  no  ordinary  observer  would  be  apt  to 
notice  them.  Above  all  have  I  done  this  because  it  is 
my  deep  conviction  that  we  can  find  more  religion  in 
George  Eliot's  works  than  she  herself  dreamed  she  was 
putting  there,  and  a  clearer  faith  for  us  than  she  ever 
formulated  for  herself:  a  strange  and  solemn  result,  but 
one  not  without  parallel :  for  Mrs.  Browning's  words  of 
Lucretius,  in  Tlie  Vision  of  Poets,  partly  apply  here  : 

"Lucretius,  nobler  than  his  mood! 
Who  dropped  his  plummet  down  the  broad 
Deep  Universe,  and  said  '  No  God,' 
IS 


226  The  English  Novel 


Finding  no  bottom !     He  denied 
Divinely  the  divine,  and  died 
Chief-poet  on  the  Tiber-side, 
By  grace  of  God !     His  face  is  stem. 
As  one  compelled,  in  spite  of  scorn, 
To  teach  a  truth  he  could  not  learn." 


The  Development  of  Personality      227 


While  it  is  true  that  the  publication  of  Adam  Bede 
enables  us  —  as  stated  in  the  last  lecture  —  to  fix  George 
Eliot  as  already  at  the  head  of  English  novel  writers  in 
1859, 1  should  add  that  the  effect  of  the  book  was  not  so 
well  defined  upon  the  public  of  that  day.  The  work  was 
not  an  immediate  popular  success ;  and  even  some  of  the 
authoritative  critics,  instead  of  recognizing  its  greatness 
with  generosity,  went  pottering  about  to  find  what  ex- 
isting authors  this  new  one  had  most  likely  drawn  her 
inspiration  from. 

But  The  Mill  on  the  Floss,  which  appeared  in  April, 
i860,  together  with  some  strong  and  generous  reviews 
of  Adam  Bede  which  had  meantime  appeared  in  Black- 
woods  Magazine  and  in  the  London  Times,  quickly  car- 
ried away  the  last  vestige  of  this  suspense,  and  The  Mill 
on  the  Floss  presently  won  for  itself  a  popular  audience 
and  loving  appreciation  which  appear  to  have  been  very 
gratifying  to  George  Eliot  herself.  This  circumstance 
alone  would  make  the  book  an  interesting  one  for  our 
present  special  study ;  but  the  interest  is  greatly  height- 
ened by  the  fact  —  a  fact  which  I  find  most  positively 
stated  by  those  who  most  intimately  knew  her  —  that  the 
picture  of  girlhood  which  occupies  so  large  a  portion  of 
the  first  part  of  the  book  is,  in  many  particulars, 
autobiographic.  The  title  originally  chosen  for  this 
work  by  George  EHot  was  Sister  Maggie  :  from  which 
we  may  judge  the  prominence  she  intended  to  give  to 


228  The  English  Novel 

the  character  of  Maggie  TuUiver.  After  the  book  was 
finished,  however,  this  title  was  felt  to  be  for  several 
reasons  insufficient.  It  was  a  happy  thought  of  Mr. 
Blackwood's  to  call  the  book  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  ;  and 
George  Eliot  immediately  adopted  his  suggestion  to 
that  effect.  There  is  too  a  third  reason  why  this  par- 
ticular work  offers  some  peculiar  contributions  to  the 
main  lines  of  thought  upon  which  these  lectures  have 
been  built.  As  I  go  on  to  read  a  page  here  and  there, 
merely  by  way  of  recalling  the  book  and  the  actual 
style  to  you,  you  will  presently  find  that  the  interest  of 
the  whole  has  for  the  time  concentrated  itself  upon  the 
single  figure  of  a  little  wayward  English  girl  some  nine 
years  old,  —  perhaps  alone  in  a  garret  in  some  fit  of 
childish  passion  accusing  the  Divine  order  of  things  as  to 
its  justice  or  mercy,  crudely  and  inarticulately  enough, 
yet  quite  as  keenly  after  all  as  our  Prometheus,  either 
according  to  ^schylus  or  Shelley.  As  I  pass  along  rapidly 
bringing  back  to  you  these  pictures  of  Maggie's  girlish 
despairs,  I  beg  you  to  recall  the  first  scenes  which  were 
set  before  you  from  the  Prometheus,  to  bear  those  in 
mind  along  with  these,  to  note  how  ^schylus  —  whom 
we  have  agreed  to  consider  as  a  literary  prototype, 
occupying  much  the  same  relation  to  his  age  as  George 
Eliot  does  to  ours  —  in  stretching  Prometheus  upon  the 
bare  Caucasian  rock  and  lacerating  him  with  the  just 
lightnings  of  outraged  Fate  is  at  bottom  only  studying 
with  a  ruder  apparatus  the  same  phenomena  which 
George  Eliot  is  here  unfolding  before  us  in  the  micro- 
scopic struggles  of  the  little  English  girl ;  and  I  ask 
you  particularly  to  observe  how  here,  as  we  have  so 
many  times  found  before,  the  enormous  advance  from 
Prometheus  to  Maggie  Tulliver — from  ^schylus  to 
George  Eliot  —  is  summed  up  in  the  fact  that  while  per- 


The  Development  of  Personality     2:29 

sonality  in  ^Eschylus'  time  had  got  no  further  than  the 
conception  of  a  universe  in  which  justice  is  the  organic 
idea,  in  George  Eliot's  time  it  has  arrived  at  the  concep- 
tion of  a  universe  in  which  love  is  the  organic  idea ;  and 
that  it  is  precisely  upon  the  stimulus  of  this  new  growth 
of  individualism  that  George  Eliot's  readers  crowd  up 
with  interest  to  share  the  tiny  woes  of  insignificant 
Maggie  Tulliver,  while  ^schylus,  in  order  to  assemble 
an  interested  audience,  must  have  his  Jove,  his  Titans, 
his  earthquakes,  his  mysticism,  and  the  blackness  of  in- 
conclusive Fate  withal. 

Everyone  remembers  a  sense  of  mightiness  in  this 
opening  chapter  of  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  where  the 
great  river  Floss,  thick  with  heavy-laden  ships,  sweeps 
down  to  the  sea  by  the  red-roofed  town  of  St.  Ogg's. 
Remembering  how  we  found  that  the  first  personality 
described  in  Adam  Bede  was  that  of  a  shepherd-dog, 
here  too  we  find  that  the  first  prominent  figures  in  our 
landscape  are  those  of  animals.  The  author  is  indulg- 
ing in  a  sort  of  dreamy  prelude  of  reminiscences,  and 
in  describing  Dorlcote  Mill,  Maggie's  home,  says : 

"  The  rush  of  the  water  and  the  booming  of  the  mill  bring 
a  dreamy  deafness  which  seems  to  heighten  the  peacefulness 
of  the  scene.  They  are  like  a  great  curtain  of  sound,  shut- 
ting one  out  from  the  world  beyond.  And  now  there  is  the 
thunder  of  the  huge  covered  wagon  coming  home  with  sacks 
of  grain.  That  honest  wagoner  is  thinking  of  his  dinner, 
getting  sadly  dry  in  the  oven  at  this  late  hour ;  but  he  will 
not  touch  it  until  he  has  fed  his  horses,  —  the  strong,  sub- 
missive,  meek-eyed  beasts,  who,  I  fancy,  are  looking  mild 
reproach  at  him  from  between  their  blinkers,  that  he  should 
crack  his  whip  at  them  in  that  awful  manner,  as  if  they 
needed  that  hint !  See  how  they  stretch  their  shoulders  up 
the  slope  to  the  bridge,  with  all  the  more  energy  because 
they  are  so  near  home.     Look  at  their  grand,  shaggy  feet, 


230  The  English  Novel 

that  seem  to  grasp  the  firm  earth,  at  the  patient  strength  of 
their  necks  bowed  under  the  heavy  collar,  at  the  mighty 
muscles  of  their  struggling  haunches !  I  should  like  well  to 
hear  them  neigh  over  their  hardly  earned  feed  of  corn,  and 
see  them,  with  their  moist  necks  freed  from  the  harness,  dip- 
ping their  eager  nostrils  into  the  muddy  pond.  Now  they 
are  on  the  bridge,  and  down  they  go  again  at  a  swifter  pace, 
and  the  arch  of  the  covered  wagon  disappears  at  a  turning 
behind  the  trees." 


Remembering  how  we  have  agreed  that  the  author's 
comments  in  the  modern  novel,  acquainting  us  with  such 
parts  of  the  action  as  could  not  be  naturally  or  conven- 
iently brought  upon  the  stage,  might  be  profitably 
regarded  as  a  development  of  certain  well-known  func- 
tions of  the  Chorus  in  the  Greek  drama  —  we  have  here 
a  quite  palpable  instance  of  the  necessity  for  such  devel- 
opment ;  how  otherwise,  could  we  be  let  into  the  inner 
emotions  of  farm-horses  so  genially  as  in  this  charming 
passage  ? 

In  Chapter  II  we  are  introduced  to  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
TuUiver  talking  by  the  fire  in  the  left-hand  corner  of 
their  cosy  English  home,  and  I  must  read  a  page  or  two 
of  their  conversation  before  bringing  Maggie  on  the 
stage  if  only  to  show  the  intense  individualism  of  the 
latter  by  making  the  reader  wonder  how  such  an  indi- 
vidualism could  ever  have  been  evolved  from  any  such 
precedent  conditions  as  those  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Tulliver. 
"  What  I  want,  you  know,"  said  Mr.  Tulliver,  — 

"  *  What  I  want  is  to  give  Tom  a  good  eddication  —  an 
eddication  as'U  be  bread  to  him.  That  was  what  T  was 
thinking  of  when  I  gave  notice  for  him  to  leave  th'  academy 
at  Ladyday.  I  mean  to  put  him  to  a  downright  good  school 
at  Midsummer.  The  two  years  at  th'  academy  'ud  ha'  done 
well  enough,  if  I'd  meant  to  make  a  miller  and  farmer  of 


The  Development  of  Personality      1231 

him,  for  he's  had  a  fine  sight  more  schoolin'  nor  /  ever  got : 
all  the  learnin'  my  father  ever  paid  for  was  a  bit  o'  birch  at 
one  end  and  the  alphabet  at  th'  other.  But  I  should  like 
Tom  to  be  a  bit  of  a  scholard,  so  as  he  might  be  up  to  the 
tricks  o'  these  fellows  as  talk  fine  and  write  with  a  flourish. 
It  'ud  be  a  help  to  me  wi*  these  lawsuits,  and  arbitrations, 
and  things.  I  wouldn't  make  a  downright  lawyer  o'  the  lad, 
—  I  should  be  sorry  for  him  to  be  a  raskill,  —  but  a  sort  o* 
engineer,  or  a  surveyor,  or  an  auctioneer  and  vallyer,  like 
Riley,  or  one  o'  them  smartish  businesses  as  are  all  profits 
and  no  out -lay,  only  for  a  big  watch-chain  and  a  high  stool. 
They're  putty  nigh  all  one,  and  they're  not  far  off  being 
even  wi'  the  law,  /  believe  ;  for  Riley  looks  Lawyer  Wakem 
i'  the  face  as  hard  as  one  cat  looks  another.  He's  none 
frightened  at  him.' 

"  Mr.  TuUiver  was  speaking  to  his  wife,  a  blond  comely 
woman,  in  a  fan-shaped  cap  (I  am  afraid  to  think  how  long 
it  was  since  fan-shaped  caps  were  worn,  — they  must  be  so 
near  coming  in  again.  At  that  time,  when  Mrs.  Tulliver  was 
nearly  forty,  they  were  new  at  St.  Ogg's,  and  considered 
sweet  things). 

"  'Well,  Mr.  Tulliver,  you  know  best:  I^ve  no  objections. 
But  hadn't  I  better  kill  a  couple  o'  fowl  and  have  th'  aunts 
and  uncles  to  dinner  next  week,  so  as  you  may  hear  what 
sister  Glegg  and  sister  Pullet  have  got  to  say  about  it? 
There's  a  couple  o'  fowl  wants  killing  ! ' 

"  *  You  may  kill  every  fowl  i*  the  yard,  if  you  like,  Bessy ; 
but  I  shall  ask  neither  aunt  nor  uncle  what  I  'm  to  do  wi'  my 
own  lad,'  said  Mr.  Tulliver,  defiantly. 

" '  Dear  heart ! '  said  Mrs.  Tulliver,  shocked  at  this  san- 
guinary rhetoric,  '  how  can  you  talk  so,  Mr.  Tulliver  ?  But 
it's  your  way  to  speak  disrespectful  o'  my  family ;  and  sister 
Glegg  throws  all  the  blame  upo'  me,  though  I'm  sure  I'm 
as  innocent  as  the  babe  unborn.  For  nobody's  ever  heard 
me  say  as  it  wasn't  lucky  for  my  children  to  have  aunts  and 
uncles  as  can  live  independent.  Howiver,  if  Tom's  to  go 
to  a  new  school,  I  should  like  him  to  go  where  I  can  wash 
him  and  mend  him;  else  he  might  as  well  have  calico  as 
linen,  for  they'd  be  one  as  yallor  as  th'  other  before  they'd 


232  The  English  Novel 

been  washed  half  a  dozen  times.  And  then,  when  the  box 
is  goin'  backards  and  forrards,  I  could  send  the  lad  a  cake, 
or  a  pork-pie  or  an  apple ;  for  he  can  do  with  an  extry  bit, 
bless  him,  whether  they  stint  him  at  the  meals  or  no.  My 
children  can  eat  as  much  victuals  as  most,  thank  God.* 

"  Mr.  Tulliver  paused  a  minute  or  two,  and  dived  with  both 
hands  into  his  breeches  pockets  as  if  he  hoped  to  find  some 
suggestion  there.  Apparently  he  was  not  disappointed,  for 
he  presently  said,'!  know  what  I'll  do,  —  I'll  talk  it  over 
wi'  Riley :  he's  coming  to-morrow,  t'  arbitrate  about  the 
dam.' 

"  '  Well,  Mr.  Tulliver,  I've  put  the  sheets  out  for  the  best 
bed,  and  Kezia's  got  'em  hanging  at  the  fire.  They  are  n't 
the  best  sheets,  but  they're  good  enough  for  anybody  to 
sleep  in,  be  he  who  he  will ;  for  as  for  them  best  Holland 
sheets,  I  should  repent  buying  'em,  only  they'll  do  to  lay  us 
out  in.  An'  if  you  was  to  die  to-morrow,  Mr.  Tulliver, 
they're  mangled  beautiful,  an'  all  ready,  an'  smell  o'  laven- 
der, as  it  'ud  be  a  pleasure  to  lay  'em  out ;  an'  they  lie  at  the 
left-hand  corner  o'  the  big  oaken  chest  at  the  back :  not  as  I 
should  trust  anybody  to  look  'em  out  but  myself.' " 

In  the  next  chapter  Mr.  Tulliver  at  night,  over  a  cosy 
glass  of  brandy-and-water,  is  discussing  with  Riley  the 
momentous  question  of  a  school  for  Tom.  Mrs.  Tulliver 
is  out  of  the  room  upon  household  cares  and  Maggie  is 
off  on  a  low  stool  close  by  the  fire,  apparently  buried  in 
a  large  book  that  is  open  on  her  lap,  but  betraying  her 
interest  in  the  conversation  by  occasionally  shaking  back 
her  heavy  hair  and  looking  up  with  gleaming  eyes  when 
Tom's  name  is  mentioned.  Presently  Maggie  in  an 
agitated  outburst  on  Tom's  behalf  drops  the  book  she  has 
been  reading.  Mr.  Riley  picks  it  up,  and  here  we  have 
a  glimpse  at  the  kind  of  food  which  nourished  Maggie's 
infant  mind.  Mr.  Riley  calls  out,  "  Come,  come  and  tell 
me  something  about  this  book ;  here  are  some  pictures  — ■ 
I  want  to  know  what  they  mean." 


The  Development  of  Personality      2;^;^ 

Maggie,  with  deepening  color,  went  without  hesitation 
to  Mr.  Riley's  elbow  and  looked  over  the  book,  eagerly 
seizing  one  corner  and  tossing  back  her  mane,  while 
she  said: 

"  *  Oh,  I'll  tell  you  what  that  means.  It's  a  dreadful  picture, 
isn't  it  ?  But  I  can't  help  looking  at  it.  That  old  woman  in 
the  water's  a  witch,  — they've  put  her  in  to  find  out  whether 
she's  a  witch  or  no,  and  if  she  swims  she's  a  witch,  and  if 
she's  drowned  —  and  killed,  you  know  —  she's  innocent,  and 
not  a  witch,  but  only  a  poor  silly  old  woman.  But  what 
good  would  it  do  her  then,  you  know,  when  she  was  drowned  .'* 
Only,  I  suppose,  she'd  go  to  heaven,  and  God  would  make  it 
up  to  her.  And  this  dreadful  blacksmith,  with  his  arms 
akimbo,  laughing  —  oh,  isn't  he  ugly.'' — I'll  tell  you  what 
he  is.  He's  the  devil  rea//y '  (here  Maggie's  voice  became 
louder  and  more  emphatic),  'and  not  a  right  blacksmith; 
for  the  devil  takes  the  shape  of  wicked  men,  and  walks 
about  and  sets  people  doing  wicked  things,  and  he's  oftener 
in  the  shape  of  a  bad  man  than  any  other,  because,  you  know, 
if  people  saw  he  was  the  devil,  and  he  roared  at  'em,  they'd 
runaway,  and  he  couldn't  make  'em  do  what  he  pleased.' 

"  Mr.  Tulliver  had  listened  to  this  exposition  of  Maggie's 
with  petrifying  wonder. 

" '  Why,  what  book  is  it  the  wench  has  got  hold  on  ? '  he 
burst  out,  at  last. 

"  *  T/ie  History  of  the  Devil,  by  Daniel  Defoe  ;  not  quite 
the  right  book  for  a  little  girl,'  said  Mr.  Riley.  *  How  came 
it  among  your  books,  Tulliver  ?  ' 

"  Maggie  looked  hurt  and  discouraged,  while  her  father 
said,  '  Why,  it's  one  o*  the  books  I  bought  at  Partridge's 
sale.  They  was  all  bound  alike,  —  it's  a  good  binding,  you 
see, —  and  I  thought  they'd  be  all  good  books.  There's 
Jeremy  Taylor's  Holy  Livins;  aftd  Dying  among  'em  ;  T  read 
in  it  often  of  a  Sunday  '  (Mr.  Tulliver  felt  somehow  a  famil- 
iarity with  that  great  writer  because  his  name  was  Jeremy) ; 
•  and  there's  a  lot  more  of  'em,  sermons  mostly,  I  think; 
but  they've  all  got  the  same  covers,  and  I  thought  they  were 
all  o*  one  sample,  as  you  may  say.  But  it  seems  one  mustn't 
judge  by  th'  outside.     This  is  a  puzzlin'  world.* 


234  The  English  Novel 

"'Well,'  said  Mr.  Riley,  in  an  admonitory  patronizing 
tone,  as  he  patted  Maggie  on  the  head,  '  I  advise  you  to  put 
by  the  History  of  the  Devil,  and  read  some  prettier  book. 
Have  you  no  prettier  books  ?  ' 

"  *  Oh,  yes,'  said  Maggie,  reviving  a  little  in  the  desire  to 
vindicate  the  variety  of  her  reading ;  '  I  know  the  reading 
in  this  book  isn't  pretty,  but  I  like  to  look  at  the  pictures, 
and  I  make  stories  to  the  pictures  out  of  my  own  head,  you 
know.  But  I've  got  jEsop^s  Fables,  and  a  book  about  kan- 
garoos and  things,  and  the  Pilgrim* s  Progress''  — 

"  '  Ah !  a  beautiful  book,'  said  Mr.  Riley ;  <  you  can't  read 
a  better.' 

"  *  Well,  but  there's  a  great  deal  about  the  devil  in  that,' 
said  Maggie,  triumphantly,  '  and  I'll  show  you  the  picture 
of  him  in  his  true  shape,  as  he  fought  with  Christian.' 

"  Maggie  ran  in  an  instant  to  the  corner  of  the  room,  jumped 
on  a  chair,  and  reached  down  from  the  small  bookcase  a 
shabby  old  copy  of  Bunyan,  which  opened  at  once,  without 
the  least  trouble  of  search,  at  the  picture  she  wanted. 

"  *  Here  he  is,'  she  said,  running  back  to  Mr.  Riley,  *  and 
Tom  coloured  him  for  me  with  his  paints  when  he  was  at 
home  last  holidays  —  the  body  all  black,  you  know,  and  the 
eyes  red,  like  fire,  because  he's  all  fire  inside,  and  it  shines 
out  at  his  eyes.' 

"  *  Go,  go !  *  said  Mr.  Tulliver,  peremptorily,  beginning  to 
feel  rather  uncomfortable  at  these  free  remarks  on  the  per- 
sonal appearance  of  a  being  powerful  enough  to  create  law- 
yers ;  •  shut  up  the  book,  and  let's  hear  no  more  o'  such  talk. 
It  is  as  I  thought,  —  the  child  'ud  learn  more  mischief  nor 
good  wi'  the  books.     Go,  go  and  see  after  your  mother.' " 

And  here  are  further  various  hints  of  Maggie's  ways,  in 
which  we  find  clues  to  many  outbursts  of  her  later  life. 

"  It  was  a  heavy  disappointment  to  Maggie  that  she  was 
not  allowed  to  go  with  her  father  in  the  gig  when  he  went  to 
fetch  Tom  home  from  the  academy ;  but  the  morning  was 
too  wet,  Mrs.  Tulliver  said,  for  a  little  girl  to  go  out  in  her 
best  bonnet.     Maggie  took  the  opposite  view  very  strongly, 


The  Development  of  Personality      235 

and  it  was  a  direct  consequence  of  this  difference  of  opinion 
that  when  her  mother  was  in  the  act  of  brushing  out  the 
reluctant  black  crop,  Maggie  suddenly  rushed  from  under 
her  hands  and  dipped  her  head  in  a  basin  of  water  standing 
near,  —  in  the  vindictive  determination  that  there  should  be 
no  more  chance  of  curls  that  day. 

"  '  Maggie,  Maggie ! '  exclaimed  Mrs.  Tulliver,  sitting  stout 
and  helpless  with  the  brushes  on  her  lap,  *  what  is  to  become 
of  you  if  you're  so  naughty.?  I'll  tell  your  aunt  Glegg  and 
your  aunt  Pullet  when  they  come  next  week,  and  they'll 
never  love  you  any  more.  Oh  dear,  oh  dear !  look  at  your 
clean  pinafore,  wet  from  top  to  bottom.  Folks  'uU  think  it's 
a  judgment  on  me  as  I've  got  such  a  child,  —  they'll  think 
I've  done  summat  wicked.' 

"  Before  this  remonstrance  was  finished,  Maggie  was  already 
out  of  hearing,  making  her  way  toward  the  great  attic  that 
ran  under  the  old  high-pitched  roof,  shaking  the  water  from 
her  black  locks  as  she  ran,  like  a  Skye  terrier  escaped  from 
his  bath.  This  attic  was  Maggie's  favourite  retreat  on  a  wet 
day,  when  the  weather  was  not  too  cold;  here  she  fretted  out 
all  her  ill-humours,  and  talked  aloud  to  the  worm-eaten  floors 
and  the  worm-eaten  shelves,  and  the  dark  rafters  festooned 
with  cobwebs;  and  here  she  kept  a  Fetish  which  she  pun- 
ished for  all  her  misfortunes.  This  was  the  trunk  of  a  large 
wooden  doll,  which  once  stared  with  the  roundest  of  eyes 
above  the  reddest  of  cheeks,  but  was  now  entirely  defaced  by 
a  long  career  of  vicarious  suffering.  Three  nails  driven  into 
the  head  commemorated  as  many  crises  in  Maggie's  nine 
years  of  earthly  struggle ;  that  luxury  of  vengeance  having 
been  suggested  to  her  by  the  picture  of  Jael  destroying 
Sisera  in  the  old  Bible.  The  last  nail  had  been  driven  in 
with  a  fiercer  stroke  than  usual,  for  the  Fetish  on  that  occa- 
sion represented  aunt  Glegg." 

But  a  ray  of  sunshine  on  the  window  of  the  garret 
proves  too  much  for  her;  she  dances  down  stairs,  and 
after  a  wild  whirl  in  the  sunshine  with  Yap  the  terrier 
goes  up  into  the  mill  for  a  talk  with  Luke  the  miller. 


136  The  English  Novel 

"  Maggie  loved  to  linger  in  the  great  spaces  of  the  mill, 
and  often  came  out  with  her  black  hair  powdered  to  a  soft 
whiteness  that  made  her  dark  eyes  flash  out  with  a  new  fire. 
The  resolute  din,  the  unresting  motion  of  the  great  stones, 
giving  her  a  dim  delicious  awe  as  at  the  presence  of  an  un- 
controllable force,  —  the  meal  forever  pouring,  pouring,  —  the 
fine  white  powder  softening  all  surfaces,  and  making  the  very 
spider-nets  look  like  a  fancy  lace-work,  —  the  sweet,  pure 
scent  of  the  meal  —  all  helped  to  make  Maggie  feel  that  the 
mill  was  a  little  world  apart  from  her  outside,  everyday  life. 
The  spiders  were  especially  a  subject  of  speculation  with  her. 
She  wondered  if  they  had  any  relations  outside  the  mill,  for 
in  that  case  there  must  be  a  painful  difficulty  in  their  family 
intercourse,  —  a  flat  and  floury  spider,  accustomed  to  take 
his  fly  well  dusted  with  meal,  must  suffer  a  little  at  a  cousin's 
table  where  the  fly  was  au  naturelj  and  the  lady-spiders 
must  be  mutually  shocked  at  each  other's  appearance.  But 
the  part  of  the  mill  she  liked  best  was  the  topmost  story,  — 
the  corn-hutch,  where  there  were  the  great  heaps  of  grain, 
which  she  could  sit  on  and  slide  down  continually.  She  was 
in  the  habit  of  taking  this  recreation  as  she  conversed  with 
Luke,  to  whom  she  was  very  communicative,  wishing  him  to 
think  well  of  her  understanding,  as  her  father  did. 

"  Perhaps  she  felt  it  necessary  to  recover  her  position  with 
him  on  the  present  occasion,  for,  as  she  sat  sliding  on  the 
heap  of  grain  near  which  he  was  busying  himself,  she  said, 
at  that  shrill  pitch  which  was  requisite  in  mill  society,  — 

"'I  think  you  never  read  any  book  but  the  Bible,  —  did 
you  Luke  ? ' 

"'Nay,  miss,  —  an'  not  much  o'  that,'  said  Luke,  with 
great  frankness.     *  I'm  no  reader,  I  are  n't.' 

"  *  But  if  I  lent  you  one  of  my  books,  Luke  ?  I've  not  got 
any  very  pretty  books  that  would  be  easy  for  you  to  read, 
but  there's  Pug^s  Tour  of  Europe,  —  that  would  tell  you  all 
about  the  different  sorts  of  people  in  the  world,  and  if  you 
didn't  understand  the  reading,  the  pictures  would  help  you 
—  they  show  the  looks  and  the  ways  of  the  people,  and  what 
they  do.  There  are  the  Dutchmen,  very  fat,  and  smoking, 
you  know,  —  and  one  sitting  on  a  barrel.' 


The  Development  of  Personality      237 

"*Nay,  miss,  I've  no  opinion  o'  Dutchmen.  There  ben't 
much  good  i'  knowin'  about  them!' 

"  *  But  they're  our  fellow-creatures,  Luke,  —  we  ought  to 
know  about  our  fellow-creatures.' 

" '  Not  much  o'  fellow-creatures,  I  think,  miss  ;  all  I  know, 
—  my  old  master,  as  war  a  knowin'  man,  used  to  say,  says 
he,  "  If  e'er  I  sow  my  wheat  wi'out  brinin',  I'm  a  Dutch- 
man," says  he ;  an'  that  war  as  much  as  to  say  as  a  Dutch- 
man war  a  fool,  or  next  door.  Nay,  nay,  I  are  n't  goin'  to 
bother  mysen  about  Dutchmen.  There's  fools  enoo,  —  an' 
rogues  enoo,  —  wi'out  lookin'  i*  books  for  'em.' 

" '  Oh,  well,'  said  Maggie,  rather  foiled  by  Luke's  unex- 
pectedly decided  views  about  Dutchmen, '  perhaps  you  would 
like  Animated  Nature  better;  that's  not  Dutchmen,  you 
know,  but  elephants,  and  kangaroos,  and  the  civet  cat,  and 
the  sunfish,  and  a  bird  sitting  on  its  tail,  —  I  forget  its 
name.  There  are  countries  full  of  those  creatures,  instead 
of  horses  and  cows,  you  know.  Shouldn't  you  like  to  know 
about  them,  Luke  ? ' 

"  •  Nay,  miss,  I'n  got  to  keep  count  o'  the  flour  an'  corn,  — 
I  can't  do  wi'  knowin'  so  many  things  besides  my  work. 
That's  what  brings  folks  to  the  gallows,  —  knowin'  every 
thing  but  what  they'n  got  to  get  their  bread  by.  An'  they're 
mostly  lies,  I  think,  what's  printed  i'  the  books ;  them 
printed  sheets  are,  anyhow,  as  the  men  cry  i'  the  streets.* " 

But  these  are  idyllic  hours;  presently  the  afternoon  v 
comes,  Tom  arrives,  Maggie  has  an  hour  of  rapturous/ 
happiness  over  him  and  a  new  fishing-line  which  he  has "'., 
brought  her,  to  be  hers  all  by  herself;  and  then  comes  \ 
tragedy.     Tom  learns  from  Maggie  the  death  of  certain  / 
rabbits  which  he  had  left  in  her  charge  and  which,  as  \ 
might  have  been  expected,  she  had  forgotten  to  feed.    I 
Here  follows  a  harrowing  scene  of  reproaches  from  Tom, 
of  pleadings  for  forgiveness  from  Maggie,  until  finally 
Tom  appears  to  close  the  door  of  mercy.     He  sternly 
insists :  "  Last   holidays   you   licked   the   paint  off  my 


238  The  English  Novel 

lozenge  box,  and  the  holidays  before  that  you  let  the 
boat  drag  my  fish-line  down  when  I  set  you  to  watch  it, 
and  you  pushed  your  head  through  my  kite,  all  for 
nothing."  "But  I  didn't  mean,"  said  Maggie;  "I 
couldn't  help  it."  "Yes,  you  could,"  said  Tom,  "if 
you'd  minded  what  you  were  doing.  .  .  .  And  you 
shan't  go  fishing  with  me  to-morrow."  With  this  terri- 
ble conclusion  Tom  runs  off  to  the  mill,  while  the  heart- 
broken Maggie  creeps  up  to  her  attic,  lays  her  head 
against  the  worm-eaten  shelf  and  abandons  herself  to 
misery. 

In  the  scene  which  I  now  read,  howbeit  planned  upon 
so  small  a  scale,  the  absolute  insufficiency  of  justice  to 
give  final  satisfaction  to  human  hearts  as  now  constituted, 
and  the  inexorable  necessity  of  love  for  such  satisfaction 
appear  quite  as  plainly  as  if  the  canvas  were  of  Prome- 
thean dimensions. 

"  Maggie  soon  thought  she  had  been  hours  in  the  attic, 
and  it  must  be  tea-time,  and  they  were  all  having  their  tea, 
and  not  thinking  of  her.  Well,  then,  she  would  stay  up 
there  and  starve  herself,  —  hide  herself  behind  the  tub,  and 
stay  there  all  night;  and  then  they  would  all  be  frightened, 
and  Tom  would  be  sorry.  Thus  Maggie  thought  in  the 
pride  of  her  heart,  as  she  crept  behind  the  tub ;  but  presently 
she  began  to  cry  again  at  the  idea  that  they  didn't  mind  her 
being  there.  If  she  went  down  again  to  Tom  now,  would 
he  forgive  her  ?  Perhaps  her  father  would  be  there,  and  he 
would  take  her  part.  But,  then  she  wanted  Tom  to  forgive 
her  because  he  loved  her,  and  not  because  his  father  told 
him.  No,  she  would  never  go  down  if  Tom  didn't  come  to 
fetch  her.  This  resolution  lasted  in  great  intensity  for  five 
dark  minutes  behind  the  tub ;  but  then  the  need  of  being 
loved,  the  strongest  need  in  poor  Maggie's  nature,  began  to 
wrestle  with  her  pride,  and  soon  threw  it.  She  crept  from 
behind  her  tub  into  the  twilight  of  the  long  attic,  but  just 
then  she  heard  a  quick  footstep  on  the  stairs." 


The  Development  of  Personality      239 

In  point  of  fact  Tom  has  been  sent  from  the  tea-table 
for  her  and  mounts  the  attic  munching  a  great  piece  of 
plum-cake. 

..."  He  went  out  rather  sullenly,  carrying  his  piece  of 
plum-cake,  and  not  intending  to  retrieve  Maggie's  punish- 
ment, which  was  no  more  than  she  deserved.  Tom  was 
only  thirteen,  and  had  no  decided  views  in  grammar  and 
arithmetic,  regarding  them  for  the  most  part  as  open  ques- 
tions; but  he  was  particularly  clear  and  positive  on  one 
point,  —  namely,  that  he  would  punish  every  body  who  de- 
served it:  why,  he  wouldn't  have  minded  being  punished 
himself,  if  he  deserved  ;  but  then  he  never  did  deserve  it. 

"  It  was  Tom's  step,  then,  that  Maggie  heard  on  the  stairs 
when  her  need  of  love  had  triumphed  over  her  pride,  and 
she  was  going  down  with  her  swollen  eyes  and  dishevelled  hair 
to  beg  for  pity.  At  least  her  father  would  stroke  her  head 
and  say,  *  Never  mind,  my  wench.*  It  is  a  wonderful  sub- 
duer,  this  need  of  love,  —  this  hunger  of  the  heart,  —  as  per- 
emptory as  that  other  hunger  by  which  Nature  forces  us  to 
submit  to  the  yoke,  and  change  the  face  of  the  world. 

"  But  she  knew  Tom's  step,  and  her  heart  began  to  beat 
violently  with  the  sudden  shock  of  hope.  He  only  stood 
still  at  the  top  of  the  stairs  and  said  *  Maggie,  you're  to 
come  down.'  But  she  rushed  to  him  and  clung  round  his 
neck,  sobbing,  *  Oh,  Tom,  please  forgive  me  —  I  can't  bear 
it —  I  will  always  be  good  —  always  remember  things  —  do 
love  me  —  please,  dear  Tom  ? ' 

"  We  learn  to  restrain  ourselves  as  we  get  older.  We  keep 
apart  when  we  have  quarrelled,  express  ourselves  in  well-bred 
phrases,  and  in  this  way  preserve  a  dignified  alienation,  show- 
ing much  firmness  on  one  side,  and  swallowing  much  grief 
on  the  other.  We  no  longer  approximate  in  our  behaviour  to 
the  mere  impulsiveness  of  the  lower  animals,  but  conduct 
ourselves  in  every  respect  like  members  of  a  highly  civilized 
society.  Maggie  and  Tom  were  still  very  much  like  young 
animals,  and  so  she  could  rub  her  cheek  against  his,  and 
kiss  his  ear  in  a  random,  sobbing  way;  and  there  were 
tender  fibres  in  the  lad  that  had  been  used  to  answer  to 


l\o  The  English  Novel 

Maggie's  fondling;  so  that  he  behaved  with  a  weakness 
quite  inconsistent  with  his  resolution  to  punish  her  as  much 
as  she  deserved :  he  actually  began  to  kiss  her  in  return,  and 
say, 

"  *  Don't  cry,  then,  Magsie  —  here,  eat  a  bit  o'  cake.'  Mag- 
gie's sobs  began  to  subside,  and  she  put  out  her  mouth  for 
the  cake  and  bit  a  piece  ;  and  then  Tom  bit  a  piece,  just  for 
company,  and  they  ate  together  and  rubbed  each  other's 
cheeks,  and  brows,  and  noses  together,  while  they  ate,  with 
a  humiliating  resemblance  to  two  friendly  ponies. 
.  " '  Come  along,  Magsie,  and  have  tea,'  said  Tom  at  last, 
when  there  was  no  more  cake  except  what  was  down  stairs." 

Various  points  of  contrast  lead  me  to  cite  some  types 
of  character  which  appear  to  offer  instructive  compar- 
isons with  this  picture  of  the  healthy  English  boy  and 
girl.  Take  for  example  this  portrait  of  the  modern 
American  boy  given  us  by  Mr.  Henry  James,  Jr.,  in  his 
Daisy  Miller — which  was,  I  believe,  the  work  that  first 
brought  him  into  fame.  The  scene  is  in  Europe.  A 
gentleman  is  seated  in  the  garden  of  a  hotel  at  Geneva, 
smoking  his  cigarettes  after  breakfast. 

"  Presently  a  small  boy  came  walking  along  the  path  — 
an  urchin  of  nine  or  ten.  The  child,  who  was  diminutive 
for  his  years,  had  an  aged  expression  of  countenance,  a  pale 
complexion,  and  sharp  little  features.  He  was  dressed  in 
Knickerbockers,  with  red  stockings,  which  displayed  his 
poor  little  spindleshanks ;  he  also  wore  a  brilliant  red  cravat. 
He  carried  in  his  hand  a  long  alpenstock,  the  sharp  point  of 
which  he  thrust  into  everything  that  he  approached  —  the 
flower-beds,  the  garden  benches,  the  trains  of  the  ladies' 
dresses.  In  front  of  Winterbourne  he  paused,  looking  at 
him  with  a  pair  of  bright  penetrating  little  eyes. 

"  *  Will  you  give  me  a  lump  of  sugar  ? '  he  asked  in  a  sharp, 
hard  little  voice — a  voice  immature,  and  yet,  somehow,  not 
young. 

"Winterbourne  glanced  at  the  small  table  near  him  on 
which  his  cofEee-service  rested,  and  saw  that  several  morsels 


The  Development  of  Personality      241 

of  sugar  remained.     *  Yes,  you  may  take  one,'  he  answered, 

*  but  I  don't  think  sugar  is  good  for  little  boys.' 

"  This  little  boy  slipped  forward  and  carefully  selected  three 
of  the  coveted  fragments,  two  of  which  he  buried  in  the 
pocket  of  his  Knickerbockers,  depositing  the  other  as  promptly 
in  another  place.  He  poked  his  alpenstock  lance-fashion 
into  Winterbourne's  bench,  and  tried  to  crack  the  lump  of  • 
sugar  with  his  teeth. 

"  *  Oh,  blazes ;  it's  har-r-d  ! '  he  exclaimed,  pronouncing 
the  adjective  in  a  peculiar  manner. 

"  Winterbourne  had  immediately  perceived  that  he  might 
have  the  honor  of  claiming  him  as  a  fellow-countryman. 
*Take  care  you  don't  hurt  your  teeth,'  he  said  paternally. 

"  *  I  haven't  got  any  teeth  to  hurt.  They  have  all  come  out. 
I  have  only  got  seven  teeth.  My  mother  counted  them  last 
night,  and  one  came  out  right  afterwards.  She  said  she'd 
slap  me  if  any  more  came  out.  I  can't  help  it.  It's  this 
old  Europe.  It's  the  climate  that  makes  them  come  out. 
In  America  they  didn't  come  out.     It's  these  hotels.' 

"  Winterbourne  was  much  amused.  '  If  you  eat  three 
lumps  of  sugar,  your  mother  will  certainly  slap  you,'  he  said. 

"'She's  got  to  give  me  some  candy,  then,'  rejoined  his 
young  interlocutor.  '  I  can't  git  any  candy  here  —  any 
American  candy.     American  candy's  the  best  candy.* 

"'And  are  American  boys  the  best  little  boys?'  asked 
Winterbourne. 

"  *  I  don't  know.     I'm  an  American  boy,'  said  the  child. 

"  *  I  see  you  are  one  of  the  best ! '  laughed  Winterbourne. 

*  *  Are  you  an  American  man  ? '  pursued  this  vivacious 
infant.     And  then  on  Winterbourne's   affirmative   reply, — 

*  American  men  are  the  best,'  he  declared." 

On  the  other  hand  compare  this  intense  dark- eyed 
Maggie  in  her  garret  and  with  her  flaming  ways,  with 
Mrs.  Browning's  Aurora  Leigh.  Aurora  Leigh,  too,  has 
her  garret,  and  doubtless  her  intensity,  too,  blossoms 
in  that  congenial  dark  and  lonesomeness.  I  read  a  few 
lines  from  Book  ist  by  way  of  reminder. 

16 


2^2  The  English  Novel 

"  Books,  books,  books ! 
I  had  found  the  secret  of  a  garret-room 
Filed  high  with  cases  in  my  father's  name 
.  .  .  Where,  creeping  in  and  out 
Among  the  giant  fossils  of  my  past 
Like  some  small  nimble  mouse  between  the  ribs 
Of  a  mastodon,  I  nibbled  here  or  there 
At  this  or  that  box,  pulling  through  the  gap 
In  heats  of  terror,  haste,  victorious  joy, 
The  first  book  first.    And  how  I  felt  it  beat 
Under  my  pillow  in  the  morning's  dark. 
An  hour  before  the  sun  would  let  me  read ! 
My  books  I    At  last,  because  the  time  was  ripe, 
I  chanced  upon  the  poets." 

And  here,  every  reader  of  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  will 
remember  how,  at  a  later  period,  Maggie  chanced  upon 
Thomas  a  Kempis  at  a  tragic  moment  of  her  existence ; 
and  it  is  fine  to  see  how,  in  describing  situations  so  alike, 
the  purely  elemental  differences  between  the  natures  of 
Mrs.  Browning  and  George  Eliot  project  themselves 
upon  each  other. 

The  scene  in  George  Eliot  concerning  Maggie  and 
Thomas  a  Kempis  is  too  long  to  repeat  here,  but  every- 
one will  recall  the  sober,  analytic,  yet  altogether  vital 
and  thrilling  picture  of  the  trembling  Maggie,  as  she 
absorbs  wisdom  from  the  sweet  old  mediaeval  soul.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  Mrs.  Browning  sings  it  out,  after 
this  riotous  melody: 

"  As  the  earth  .  .  .  •  • 

Plunges  in  fury  when  the  internal  fires 
Have  reached  and  pricked  her  heart, 

and  throwing  flat 
The  marts  and  temples,  —  the  triumphal  gates 
And  towers  of  observation,  —  clears  herself 
To  elemental  freedom  —  thus,  my  soul, 
At  poetry's  divine  first  finger-touch 
Let  go  conventions  and  sprang  up  surprised, 


The  Development  of  Personality      243 

Convicted  of  the  great  eternities 
Before  two  worlds  .  .  , 

•  ••••.• 

.  .  .  "But  the  sun  was  high 
When  first  I  felt  my  pulses  set  themselves 
For  concord ;  when  the  rhythmic  turbulence 
Of  blood  and  brain  swept  outward  upon  words, 
As  wind  upon  the  alders,  blanching  them 
By  turning  up  their  under-natures  till 
They  trembled  in  dilation.    O  delight 
And  triumph  of  the  poet,  who  would  say 
A  man's  mere  '  yes,'  a  woman's  common  *  no,* 
A  little  human  hope  of  that  or  this. 
And  says  the  word  so  that  it  burns  you  through 
With  special  revelation,  shakes  the  heart 
Of  all  the  men  and  women  in  the  world 
As  if  one  came  back  from  the  dead  and  spoke. 
With  eyes  too  happy,  a  familiar  thing 
Become  divine  i'  the  utterance !  " 

I  have  taken  special  pleasure  in  the  last  sentence  of 
this  outburst  because  it  restates  with  a  precise  felicity  at 
once  poetic  and  scientific,  but  from  a  curiously  different 
point  of  view,  that  peculiar  function  of  George  Eliot 
which  I  pointed  out  as  appearing  in  the  very  first  of  her 
stories  :  namely,  the  function  of  elevating  the  plane  of  all 
commonplace  life  into  the  plane  of  the  heroic  by  keep- 
ing every  man  well  in  mind  of  the  awful  ego  within  him 
which  includes  all  the  possibilities  of  heroic  action. 
Now  this  is  what  George  Eliot  does,  in  putting  before  us 
these  humble  forms  of  Tom  and  Maggie,  and  the  like  : 
she  says  these  common  "  yes's  "  and  "  noes  "  in  terms 
of  Tom  and  Maggie;  and  yet  says  them  so  that  this 
particular  Tom  and  Maggie  burn  you  through  with  a 
special  revelation,  —  though  one  has  known  a  hundred 
Maggies  and  Toms  before.  Thus  we  find  the  delight 
and  triumph  of  the  poetic  and  analytic  novelist,  George 
Eliot,  precisely  parallel  to  this  delight  and  triumph  of  the 


244  The  English  Novel 

more  exclusively  poetic  Mrs.  Browning,  who  says  a  man's 
mere  "  yes,"  a  woman's  common  "  no,"  so  that  it  shakes 
the  hearts  of  all  the  men  and  women  in  the  world,  etc. 
Aurora  Leigh  continues : 

**  In  those  days,  though,  I  never  analysed 
Myself  even.     All  analysis  comes  late. 
You  catch  a  sight  of  nature,  earliest  ; 
In  full  front  sun-face,  and  your  eye-lids  wink 
And  drop  before  the  wonder  of  't ;  you  miss 
The  form,  through  seeing  the  light.     I  lived  those  days, 
And  wrote  because  I  lived  —  unlicensed  else ; 
My  heart  beat  in  my  brain.     Life's  violent  flood 
Abolished  bounds,  —  and,  which  my  neighbor's  field. 
Which  mine,  what  mattered  .'•    It  is  thus  in  youth ! 
We  play  at  leap-frog  over  the  god  Term ; 
The  love  within  us  and  the  love  without 
Are  mixed,  confounded ;  if  we  are  loved  or  love 
We  scarce  distinguish  .... 

In  that  first  onrush  of  life's  chariot  wheels 
We  know  not  if  the  forests  move,  or  we." 

And  now  as  showing  the  extreme  range  of  George 
Eliot's  genius,  — in  regions  where  perhaps  Mrs.  Browning 
never  penetrated,  —  let  me  recall  Sister  Glegg  and  Sister 
Pullet,  as  types  of  women  contrasting  with  Maggie  and 
Aurora  Leigh.  You  will  remember  how  Mrs.  Tulliver 
has  bidden  her  three  sisters,  Mrs.  Glegg,  Mrs.  Pullet,  and 
Mrs.  Deane,  with  their  respective  husbands,  to  a  great 
and  typical  Dodson  dinner,  in  order  to  eat  and  drink 
upon  the  momentous  changes  impending  in  Tom's  edu- 
cational existence : 

"The  Dodsons  were  certainly  a  handsome  family,  and 
Mrs.  Glegg  was  not  the  least  handsome  of  the  sisters.  As 
she  sat  in  Mrs.  Tulliver's  arm-chair,  no  impartial  observer 
could  have  denied  that  for  a  woman  of  fifty,  she  had  a  very 
comely  face  and  figure,  though  Tom  and  Maggie  considered 
their  aunt  Glegg  as  the  type  of  ugliness.     It  is  true  she  de* 


The  Development  of  Personality      245 

spised  the  advantages  of  costume ;  for  though,  as  she  often 
observed,  no  woman  had  better  clothes,  it  was  not  her  way 
to  wear  her  new  things  out  before  her  old  ones.  Other 
women,  if  they  liked,  might  have  their  best  thread  lace  in 
every  wash,  but  when  Mrs.  Glegg  died  it  would  be  found 
that  she  had  better  lace  laid  by  in  the  right-hand  drawer  of 
her  wardrobe,  in  the  Spotted  Chamber,  than  ever  Mrs.  Wool! 
of  St.  Ogg's  had  bought  in  her  life,  although  Mrs.  Wooll 
wore  her  lace  before  it  was  paid  for.  So  of  her  curled 
fronts.  Mrs.  Glegg  had  doubtless  the  glossiest  and  crispest 
brown  curls  in  her  drawers,  as  well  as  curls  in  various  degrees 
of  fuzzy  laxness ;  but  to  look  out  on  the  week-day  world  from 
under  a  crisp  and  glossy  front  would  be  to  introduce  a  most 
dream-like  and  unpleasant  confusion  between  the  sacred  and 
the  secular.  .  .  . 

"  So  if  Mrs.  Glegg's  front  to-day  was  more  fuzzy  and  lax 
than  usual,  she  had  a  design  under  it :  she  intended  the  most 
pointed  and  cutting  allusion  to  Mrs.  TulHver's  bunches  of 
blond  curls,  separated  from  each  other  by  a  due  wave  of 
smoothness  on  each  side  of  the  parting.  Mrs.  Tulliver  had 
shed  tears  several  times  at  sister  Glegg's  unkindness  on  the 
subject  of  these  unmatronly  curls,  but  the  consciousness  of 
looking  the  handsomer  for  them  naturally  administered  sup- 
port. Mrs.  Glegg  chose  to  wear  her  bonnet  in  the  house 
to-day,  —  untied  and  tilted  slightly,  of  course,  —  a  frequent 
practice  of  hers  when  she  was  on  a  visit,  and  happened  to  be 
in  a  severe  humour ;  she  didn't  know  what  draughts  there 
might  be  in  strange  houses.  For  the  same  reason  she  wore 
a  small  sable  tippet,  which  reached  just  to  her  shoulders, 
and  was  very  far  from  meeting  across  her  well-formed  chest, 
while  her  long  neck  was  protected  by  a  chevaux-de-frise  of 
miscellaneous  frilling.  One  would  need  to  be  learned  in  the 
fashions  of  those  times  to  know  how  far  in  the  rear  of  them 
Mrs.  Glegg's  slate-coloured  silk  gown  must  have  been;  but, 
from  certain  constellations  of  small  yellow  spots  upon  it,  and 
a  mouldy  odour  about  it  suggestive  of  a  damp  clothes-chest, 
it  was  probable  that  it  belonged  to  a  stratum  of  garments 
just  old  enough  to  have  come  recently  into  wear. 

"  Mrs.  Glegg  held  her  large  gold  watch  in  her  hand  with 


246  The  English  Novel 

the  many-doubled  chain  round  her  fingers,  and  observed  to 
Mrs.  Tulliver,  who  had  just  returned  from  a  visit  to  the 
kitchen,  that  whatever  it  might  be  by  other  people's  clocks 
and  watches,  it  was  gone  half-past  twelve  by  hers. 

"  *  I  don't  know  what  ails  sister  Pullet,'  she  continued.  *  It 
used  to  be  the  way  in  our  family  for  one  to  be  as  early  as 
another,  —  I'm  sure  it  was  so  in  my  poor  father's  time, — 
and  not  for  one  sister  to  sit  half  an  hour  before  the  others 
came.  But  if  the  ways  o'  the  family  are  altered,  it  shan't  be 
my  fault,  —  I'll  never  be  the  one  to  come  into  a  house  when 
all  the  rest  are  going  away.  I  wonder  at  sister  Deane,  — 
she  used  to  be  more  like  me.  But  if  you'll  take  my  advice* 
Bessy,  you'll  put  the  dinner  forrard  a  bit,  sooner  than  put 
it  back,  because  folks  are  late  as  ought  to  ha'  known 
better.'  .  .  . 

"  The  sound  of  wheels  while  Mrs.  Glegg  was  speaking  was 
an  interruption  highly  welcome  to  Mrs.  Tulliver,  who  has- 
tened out  to  receive  sister  Pullet,  —  it  must  be  sister  Pullet, 
because  the  sound  was  that  of  a  four-wheel. 

"  Mrs.  Glegg  tossed  her  head  and  looked  rather  sour 
about  the  mouth  at  the  thought  of  the  '  four-wheel.'  She 
had  a  strong  opinion  on  that  subject. 

"  Sister  Pullet  was  in  tears  when  the  one-horse  chaise 
stopped  before  Mrs.  TuUiver's  door,  and  it  was  apparently 
requisite  that  she  should  shed  a  few  more  before  getting 
out ;  for  though  her  husband  and  Mrs.  Tulliver  stood  ready 
to  support  her,  she  sat  still  and  shook  her  head  sadly,  as  she 
looked  through  her  tears  at  the  vague  distance. 

"  *  Why,  whativer  is  the  matter,  sister  t '  said  Mrs.  Tulliver. 
She  was  not  an  imaginative  woman,  but  it  occurred  to  her 
that  the  large  toilet-glass  in  sister  Pullet's  best  bedroom  was 
possibly  broken  for  the  second  time. 

"  There  was  no  reply  but  a  further  shake  of  the  head,  as 
Mrs.  Pullet  slowly  rose  and  got  down  from  the  chaise,  not 
without  casting  a  glance  at  Mr.  Pullet  to  see  that  he  was 
guarding  her  handsome  silk  dress  from  injury.  Mr.  Pullet 
was  a  small  man  with  a  high  nose,  small  twinkling  eyes,  and 
thin  lips,  in  a  fresh-looking  suit  of  black  and  a  white  cravat, 
that  seemed  to  have  been  tied  very  tight  on  some  higher 


The  Development  of  Personality      247 

principle  than  that  of  mere  personal  ease.  He  bore  about 
the  same  relation  to  his  tall,  good-looking  wife,  with  her 
balloon  sleeves,  abundant  mantle,  and  large  be-feathered  and 
be-ribboned  bonnet,  as  a  small  fishing-smack  bears  to  a  brig 
with  all  its  sails  spread. 

"  Mrs.  Pullet  brushed  each  door-post  with  great  nicety 
about  the  latitude  of  her  shoulders  (at  that  period  a  woman 
was  truly  ridiculous  to  an  instructed  eye  if  she  did  not 
measure  a  yard  and  a  half  across  the  shoulders),  and  having 
done  that,  sent  the  muscles  of  her  face  in  quest  of  fresh 
tears  as  she  advanced  into  the  parlour  where  Mrs.  Glegg  was 
seated. 

"  '  Well,  sister,  you're  late ;  what's  the  matter  ?  '  said 
Mrs.  Glegg,  rather  sharply,  as  they  shook  hands. 

"Mrs.  Pullet  sat  down,  lifting  up  her  mantle  carefully 
behind  before  she  answered,  — 

"  '  She's  gone,'  unconsciously  using  an  impressive  figure  of 
rhetoric. 

"  '  It  isn't  the  glass  this  time,  then,'  thought  Mrs.  TuUiver. 

"  '  Died  the  day  before  yesterday,'  continued  Mrs.  Pullet ; 
'  an*  her  legs  was  as  thick  as  my  body,'  she  added  with  deep 
sadness,  after  a  pause.  *  They'd  tapped  her  no  end  o* 
times,  and  the  water —  they  say  you  might  ha'  swum  in  it,  if 
you'd  liked.' 

"  '  Well,  Sophy,  it's  a  mercy  she's  gone,  then,  whoiver  she 
may  be,'  said  Mrs.  Glegg,  with  the  promptitude  and  empha- 
sis of  a  mind  naturally  clear  and  decided ;  '  but  I  can't 
think  who  you're  talking  of,  for  my  part.' 

"' But  /  know,' said  Mrs.  Pullet,  sighing  and  shaking  her 
head ;  '  and  there  isn't  another  such  a  dropsy  in  the  parish, 
/know  as  it's  old  Mrs.  Sutton  o'  the  Twentylands.' 

"  *  Well,  she's  no  kin  o'  yours,  nor  much  acquaintance  as 
I've  ever  heard  of,'  said  Mrs.  Glegg,  who  always  cried  just 
as  much  as  was  proper  when  anything  happened  to  her  own 
'kin,'  but  not  on  other  occasions. 

"'  She's  so  much  acquaintance  as  I've  seen  her  legs  when 
they  were  like  bladders.  .  .  .  And  an  old  lady  as  had 
doubled  her  money  over  and  over  again,  and  kept  it  all 


248  The  English  Novel 

in  her  own  management  to  the  last,  and  had  her  pocket  with 
her  keys  in  under  her  pillow  constant.  There  isn't  many 
old /^rish'ners  hke  her,  I  doubt.' 

"'And  they  say  she'd  took  as  much  physic  as  'ud  fill 
a  wagon,'  observed  Mr.  Pullet. 

" '  Ah  ! '  sighed  Mrs.  Pullet,  ♦  she'd  another  complaint 
iver  so  many  years  before  she  had  the  dropsy,  and  the  doc- 
tors couldn't  make  out  what  it  was.  And  she  said  to  me, 
when  I  went  to  see  her  last  Christmas,  she  said,  "  Mrs.  Pul- 
let, if  iver  you  have  the  dropsy,  you'll  think  o'  me."  She 
did  say  so,'  added  Mrs.  Pullet,  beginning  to  cry  bitterly 
again  ;  '  those  were  her  very  words.  And  she's  to  be  buried 
o'  Saturday,  and  Pullet's  bid  to  the  funeral.' 

"  *  Sophy,'  said  Mrs.  Glegg,  unable  any  longer  to  contain 
her  spirit  of  rational  remonstrance,  —  '  Sophy,  I  wonder  at 
you,  fretting  and  injuring  your  health  about  people  as  don't 
belong  to  you.  Your  poor  father  never  did  so,  nor  your  aunt 
Frances  neither,  nor  any  o'  the  family,  as  I  ever  beared  of. 
You  couldn't  fret  no  more  than  this  if  we'd  beared  as  our 
cousin  Abbott  had  died  sudden  without  making  his  will.' 

*'  Mrs.  Pullet  was  silent,  having  to  finish  her  crying,  and 
rather  flattered  than  indignant  at  being  upbraided  for  crying 
too  much.  It  was  not  every  body  who  could  afford  to  cry 
so  much  about  their  neighbours  who  had  left  them  nothing ; 
but  Mrs.  Pullet  had  married  a  gentleman  farmer,  and  had 
leisure  and  money  to  carry  her  crying  and  every  thing  else 
to  the  highest  pitch  of  respectability. 

"  *  Mrs.  Sutton  didn't  die  without  making  her  will,  though,* 
said  Mr.  Pullet,  with  a  confused  sense  that  he  was  saying 
something  to  sanction  his  wife's  tears;  'ours  is  a  rich  par- 
ish, but  they  say  there's  nobody  else  to  leave  as  many 
thousands  behind  *em  as  Mrs.  Sutton.  And  she's  left  no 
leggicies,  to  speak  on,  —  left  it  all  in  lump  to  her  husband's 
newy.' 

"  ♦  There  wasn't  much  good  i'  being  so  rich,  then,'  said 
Mrs.  Glegg,  '  if  she'd  got  none  but  husband's  kin  to  leave  it 
to.  It's  poor  work  when  that's  all  you're  got  to  pinch 
yourself  for;  —  not  as  I'm  one  o'  those  as  'ud  like  to  die 
without  leaving  more  money  out  at  interest  than  other  folks 


The  Development  of  Personality      249 

had  reckoned.  But  it's  a  poor  tale  when  it  must  go  out  o" 
your  own  family. ' 

"  *  I'm  sure,  sister,'  said  Mrs.  Pullet,  who  had  recovered 
sufficiently  to  take  off  her  veil  and  fold  it  carefully,  '  it's  a 
nice  sort  o'  man  as  Mrs.  Sutton  has  left  her  money  to,  for 
he's  troubled  with  the  asthmy,  and  goes  to  bed  every  night 
at  eight  o'clock.  He  told  me  about  it  himself  —  as  free  as 
could  be  —  one  Sunday  when  he  came  to  our  church.  He 
wears  a  hareskin  on  his  chest,  and  has  a  trembling  in  his 
talk,  —  quite  a  gentleman  sort  o'  man.  I  told  him  there 
wasn't  many  months  in  the  year  as  I  wasn't  under  the  doc- 
tor's hands.  And  he  said,  "  Mrs.  Pullet,  I  can  feel  for  you." 
That  was  what  he  said,  —  the  very  words.  Ah  ! '  sighed 
Mrs.  Pullet,  shaking  her  head  at  the  idea  that  there  were 
but  few  who  could  enter  fully  into  her  experiences  in  pink 
mixture  and  white  mixture,  strong  stuff  in  small  bottles,  and 
weak  stuff  in  large  bottles,  damp  boluses  at  a  shilling,  and 
draughts  at  eighteen  pence.  '  Sister,  I  may  as  well  go  and 
take  my  bonnet  off  now.  Did  you  see  as  the  capbox  was 
put  out?  '  she  added,  turning  to  her  husband. 

*'  Mr.  Pullet,  by  an  unaccountable  lapse  of  memory,  had 
forgotten  it,  and  hastened  out,  with  a  stricken  conscience,  to 
remedy  the  omission." 

Next  day  Mrs.  Tulliver  and  the  children  visit  Aunt 
Pullet :  and  we  have  some  further  affecting  details  of  that 
sensitive  lady  weeping  at  home  instead  of  abroad. 

"  Aunt  Pullet,  too,  appeared  at  the  doorway,  and  as  soon 
as  her  sister  was  within  hearing  said,  '  Stop  the  children,  for 
God's  sake,  Bessy,  —  don't  let  'em  come  up  the  doorsteps: 
Sally's  bringing  the  old  mat  and  the  duster  to  rub  their 
shoes.* 

"  Mrs.  Pullet's  front  door  mats  were  by  no  means  intended 
to  wipe  shoes  on :  the  very  scraper  had  a  deputy  to  do  its 
dirty  work,  Tom  rebelled  particularly  against  this  shoe- 
wiping,  which  he  always  considered  in  the  light  of  an 
indignity  to  his  sex.  He  felt  it  as  the  beginning  of  the  dis- 
agreeable incident  to  a  visit  at  aunt  Pullet's  where  he  had 


aco  The  English  Novel 

once  been  compelled  to  sit  with  towels  wrapped  around  his 
boots,  —  a  fact  which  may  serve  to  correct  the  too  hasty 
conclusion  that  a  visit  to  Garum  Firs  must  have  been  a  great 
treat  to  a  young  gentleman  fond  of  animals,  —  fond,  that  is, 
of  throwing  stones  at  them. 

"  The  next  disagreeable  was  confined  to  his  feminine  com- 
panions: it  was  the  mounting  of  the  polished  oak  stairs, 
which  had  very  handsome  carpets  rolled  up  and  laid  by  in  a 
spare  bedroom,  so  that  the  ascent  of  these  glossy  steps 
might  have  served,  in  barbarous  times,  as  a  trial  by  ordeal 
from  which  none  but  the  most  spotless  virtue  could  have 
come  off  with  unbroken  limbs.  Sophy's  weakness  about 
these  polished  stairs  was  always  a  subject  of  bitter  remon- 
strance on  Mrs.  Glegg's  part;  but  Mrs.  TuUiver  ventured  on 
no  comment,  only  thinking  to  herself  it  was  a  mercy  when 
she  and  the  children  were  safe  on  the  landing. 

"  *  Mrs.  Gray  has  sent  home  my  new  bonnet,  Bessy,'  said 
Mrs.  Pullet,  in  a  pathetic  tone,  as  Mrs.  Tulliver  adjusted  her 
cap. 

" '  Has  she,  sister  ?  *  said  Mrs.  Tulliver  with  an  air  of 
much  interest.     *  And  how  do  you  like  it  ? ' 

"  ♦  It's  apt  to  make  a  mess  with  clothes,  taking  'em  out 
and  putting  'em  in  again,'  said  Mrs.  Pullet,  drawing  a  bunch 
of  keys  from  her  pocket  and  looking  at  them  earnestly,  *  but 
it  *ud  be  a  pity  for  you  to  go  away  without  seeing  it. 
There's  no  knowing  what  may  happen.' 

"  Mrs.  Pullet  shook  her  head  slowly  at  this  last  serious 
consideration,  which  determined  her  to  single  out  a  par- 
ticular key. 

" '  I'm  afraid  it'll  be  troublesome  to  you  getting  it  out, 
sister,'  said  Mrs.  Tulliver,  'but  I  should  like  to  see  what 
sort  of  a  crown  she's  made  you/ 

"  Mrs.  Pullet  rose  with  a  melancholy  air  and  unlocked  one 
wing  of  a  very  bright  wardrobe,  where  you  may  have  hastily 
supposed  she  would  find  the  new  bonnet.  Not  at  all.  Such 
a  supposition  could  only  have  arisen  from  a  too  superficial 
acquaintance  with  the  habits  of  the  Dodson  family.  In  this 
wardrobe  Mrs.  Pullet  was  seeking  something  small  enough 
to  be  hidden  among  layers  of  linen, —  it  was  a  door  key. 


The  Development  of  Personality      251 

"  *  You  must  come  with  me  into  the  best  room,'  said  Mrs. 
Pullet. 

"'May  the  children  come  too,  sister?'  inquired  Mrs. 
TuUiver,  who  saw  that  Maggie  and  Lucy  were  looking 
rather  eager. 

" '  Well,'  said  aunt  Pullet,  reflectively,  ♦  it'll  perhaps  be 
safer  for  'em  to  come,  —  they'll  be  touching  something  if  we 
leave  'em  behind.' 

"  So  they  went  in  procession  along  the  bright  and  slippery 
corridor,  dimly  lighted  by  the  semilunar  top  of  the  window 
which  rose  above  the  closed  shutter:  it  was  really  quite 
solemn.  Aunt  Pullet  paused  and  unlocked  a  door  which 
opened  on  something  still  more  solemn  than  the  passage: 
a  darkened  room,  in  which  the  outer  light,  entering  feebly, 
showed  what  looked  like  the  corpses  of  furniture  in  white 
shrouds.  Everything  that  was  not  shrouded  stood  with  its 
legs  upward.  Lucy  laid  hold  of  Maggie's  frock,  and 
Maggie's  heart  beat  rapidly. 

"  Aunt  Pullet  half  opened  the  shutter,  and  then  unlocked 
the  wardrobe,  with  a  melancholy  deliberateness  which  was 
quite  in  keeping  with  the  funereal  solemnity  of  the  scene. 
The  delicious  scent  of  rose  leaves  that  issued  from  the  ward- 
robe made  the  process  of  taking  out  sheet  after  sheet  of 
silver  paper  quite  pleasant  to  assist  at,  though  the  sight  of 
the  bonnet  at  last  was  an  anticlimax  to  Maggie,  who  would 
have  preferred  something  more  strikingly  preternatural. 
But  few  things  could  have  been  more  impressive  to  Mrs. 
Tulliver.  She  looked  all  round  it  in  silence  for  some  mo- 
ments, and  then  said  emphatically,  '  Well,  sister,  I'll  never 
speak  against  the  full  crowns  agai  n  ! ' 

"  It  was  a  great  concession,  and  Mrs.  Pullet  felt  it :  she 
felt  something  was  due  to  it. 

"'You'd  like  to  see  it  on,  sister?'  she  said  sadly.  'I'll 
open  the  shutter  a  bit  farther.* 

"  *  Well,  if  you  don't  mind  taking  off  your  cap,  sister,'  said 
Mrs.  Tulliver. 

"  Mrs.  Pullet  took  off  her  cap,  displaying  the  brown  silk 
scalp  with  a  jutting  promontory  of  curls  which  was  common 
to  the  more  mature  and  judicious  women  of  those  times, 


252  The  English  Novel 

and,  placing  the  bonnet  on  her  head,  turned  slowly  round, 
like  a  draper's  lay-figure,  that  Mrs.  Tulliver  might  miss  no 
point  of  view. 

"  *  I've  sometimes  thought  there's  a  loop  too  much  o'  rib- 
bon on  this  left  side,  sister ;  what  do  you  think  ? '  said  Mrs. 
Pullet. 

"Mrs.  Tulliver  looked  earnestly  at  the  point  indicated, 
and  turned  her  head  on  one  side.  '  Well,  I  think  it's  best 
as  it  is ;  if  you  meddled  with  it,  sister,  you  might  repent.' 

" '  That's  true,'  said  aunt  Pullet,  taking  off  the  bonnet  and 
looking  at  it  contemplatively. 

" '  How  much  might  she  charge  you  for  that  bonnet,  sister  ?* 
said  Mrs.  Tulliver,  whose  mind  was  actively  engaged  on  the 
possibility  of  getting  a  humble  imitation  of  this  chef-d'' oeuvre 
made  from  a  piece  of  silk  she  had  at  home. 

"  Mrs.  Pullet  screwed  up  her  mouth,  and  shook  her  head, 
and  then  whispered,  '  Pullet  pays  for  it;  he  said  I  was  to 
have  the  best  bonnet  at  Garum  church,  let  the  next  best  be 
whose  it  would.' 

"  She  began  slowly  to  adjust  the  trimmings,  in  preparation 
for  returning  it  to  its  place  in  the  wardrobe,  and  her  thoughts 
seemed  to  have  taken  a  melancholy  turn,  for  she  shook  her 
head. 

" '  Ah  ! '  she  said  at  last, '  I  may  never  wear  it  twice,  sister : 
who  knows  ? ' 

"  *  Don't  talk  o'  that,  sister,'  answered  Mrs.  Tulliver.  *  I 
hope  you'll  have  your  health  this  summer.* 

" '  Ah  !  but  there  may  come  a  death  in  the  family,  as  there 
did  soon  after  I  had  my  green  satin  bonnet.  Cousin  Abbott 
may  go,  and  we  can't  think  o'  wearing  crape  less  than  half  a 
year  for  him.' 

" '  That  would  be  unlucky,*  said  Mrs.  Tulliver,  entering 
thoroughly  into  the  possibility  of  an  inopportune  decease. 
'There's  never  so  much  pleasure  i'  wearing  a  bonnet  the 
second  year,  especially  when  the  crowns  are  so  chancy, — 
never  two  summers  alike.' 

"*  Ah  !  it's  the  way  i'  this  world,'  said  Mrs.  Pullet,  return- 
ing the  bonnet  to  the  wardrobe  and  locking  it  up.  She 
maintained  a  silence  characterized  by  head-shaking,  until 


The  Development  of  Personality      253 

they  had  all  issued  from  the  solemn  chamber  and  were  in 
her  own  room  again.  Then,  beginning  to  cry,  she  said, 
'Sister,  if  you  should  never  see  that  bonnet  again  till  I'm 
dead  and  gone,  you'll  remember  I  showed  it  you  this 
day."' 

I  sincerely  wish  it  were  in  my  power  to  develop,  along- 
side of  the  types  of  Maggie  Tulliver  and  Aurora  Leigh, 
a  number  of  other  female  figures  which  belong  to  the 
same  period  of  life  and  literature.  I  please  myself  with 
calling  these  the  Victorian  women.  They  would  include 
the  name-giving  queen,  herself,  the  Eve  in  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing's Drama  of  Exile,  Princess  Ida  in  Tennyson's  Frin- 
cessy  Jane  Eyre,  Charlotte  Bronte,  (one  of  these  figures, 
you  observe,  is  just  as  real  to  us  as  the  other;  and  I 
have  lost  all  sense  of  difference  between  actual  and 
literary  existence),  Mrs.  Browning,  Dinah  Morris,  Milly 
Barton,  Janet  Dempster,  Florence  Nightingale  and  Sister 
Dora,  Romola,  Dorothea  Brooke,  Myra,  Charlotte  Cush- 
man,  Mary  Somerville  and  some  others.  If  we  are 
grateful  to  our  sweet  master  Tennyson  for  his  Dream  of 
Fair  Women,  how  grateful  should  we  be  to  an  age  which 
has  given  us  this  realization  of  ideal  women,  of  women 
who  are  so  strong  and  so  beautiful  that  they  have  subtly 
brought  about  that  I  can  find  no  adjective  so  satisfactory 
for  them  as  "womanly"  women.  They  have  redeemed 
the  whole  time.  When  I  hear  certain  mournful  people 
crying  out  that  this  is  a  gross  and  material  age,  I  reply 
that  gross  and  material  are  words  that  have  no  meaning 
as  of  the  epoch  of  the  Victorian  women.  When  the 
pessimists  accuse  the  time  of  small  aims  and  over-self- 
ishness, I  plead  the  Victorian  women.  When  the  pre- 
Raphaelites  clamor  that  railroad  and  telegraph  have 
fatally  scarred  the  whole  face  of  the  picturesque  and  the 
ideal  among  us,  I  reply  that  on  the  other  hand  the  Vic- 


254  Th^  English  Novel 

torian  women  are  more  beautiful  than  any  product  of 
times  that  they  call  picturesque  and  ideal. 

And  it  is  singularly  fine  that  in  some  particulars  the 
best  expression  of  the  corresponding  attitude  which  man 
has  assumed  toward  the  Victorian  women  in  the  growth 
of  the  times  has  been  poetically  formulated  by  a  woman. 
In  Mrs.  Browning's  Drama  of  Exile ^  during  those  first 
insane  moments  when  Eve  is  begging  Adam  to  banish 
her  for  her  transgression,  or  to  do  some  act  of  retribu- 
tive justice  upon  her,  Adam  continually  comforts  hei 
and  finally  speaks  these  words  : 

..."  I  am  deepest  in  the  guilt, 
If  last  in  the  transgression.  ...  If  God 
Who  gave  the  right  and  joyance  of  the  world 
Both  unto  thee  and  me,  — gave  thee  to  me, 
The  best  gift  last,  the  last  sin  was  the  worst. 
Which  sinned  against  more  complement  of  gifts 
And  grace  of  giving.     God !  I  render  back 
Strong  benediction  and  perpetual  praise 
From  mortal  feeble  lips  (as  incense  smoke. 
Out  of  a  little  censer,  may  fill  heaven), 
That  Thou,  in  striking  my  benumbed  hands 
And  forcing  them  to  drop  all  other  boons 
Of  beauty  and  dominion  and  delight, — 
Hast  left  this  well-beloved  Eve,  this  life 
Within  life,  this  best  gift,  between  their  palms, 
In  gracious  compensation ! 

"  Oh  my  God ! 
I,  standing  here  between  the  glory  and  dark,— 
The  glory  of  thy  wrath  projected  forth 
From  Eden's  wall,  the  dark  of  our  distress 
Which  settles  a  step  off  in  that  drear  world  — 
Lift  up  to  Thee  the  hands  from  whence  hath  fallen 
Only  creation's  sceptre,  —  thanking  Thee 
That  rather  Thou  hast  cast  me  out  with  her 
Than  left  me  lorn  of  her  in  Paradise, 
With  angel  looks  and  angel  songs  around 


The  Development  of  Personality      255 

To  show  the  absence  of  her  eyes  and  voice, 
And  make  society  full  desertness 
Without  her  use  in  comfort  1 
•  •••••• 

"  Because  with  her,  I  stand 
Upright,  as  far  as  can  be  in  this  fall, 
And  look  away  from  heaven  which  doth  accuse, 
And  look  away  from  earth  which  doth  convict, 
Into  her  face,  and  crown  my  discrowned  brow 
Out  of  her  love,  and  put  the  thought  of  her 
Around  me,  for  an  Eden  full  of  birds, 
And  with  my  lips  upon  her  lips,  —  thus,  thus,  — 
Do  quicken  and  sublimate  my  mortal  breath 
Which  cannot  climb  against  the  grave's  steep  sides 
But  overtops  this  grief  I " 


2^6  The  English  Novel 


XI 


The  fullness  of  George  Eliot's  mind  at  this  time  may 
be  gathered  from  the  rapidity  with  which  one  work  fol- 
lowed another.  A  book  from  her  pen  had  been  appear- 
ing regularly  each  year :  The  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life 
had  appeared  in  book  form  in  1858,  Adam  Bede  was 
printed  in  1859,  The  Mill  on  the  Floss  came  out  in 
i860,  and  now,  in  186 1,  followed  Silas  Marner^  the 
Weaver  of  Raveloe,  It  is  with  the  greatest  reluctance 
that  I  find  myself  obliged  to  pass  this  book  without 
comment.  In  some  particulars  Silas  Maimer  is  the  most 
remarkable  novel  in  our  language.  On  the  one  hand, 
when  I  read  the  immortal  scene  at  the  Rainbow  Inn 
where  the  village  functionaries,  the  butcher,  the  farrier, 
the  parish  clerk  and  so  on  are  discussing  ghosts,  bullocks 
and  other  matters  over  their  evening  ale,  my  mind  runs 
to  Dogberry  and  Verges  and  the  air  feels  as  if  Shak- 
spere  were  sitting  somewhere  not  far  off.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  downright  ghastliness  of  the  young  Squire's 
punishment  for  stealing  the  long-hoarded  gold  of  Silas 
Marner  the  weaver  always  carries  me  straight  to  that 
pitiless  Pardoner's  Tale  of  Chaucer  in  which  gold  is  so 
cunningly  identified  with  death.  I  am  sure  you  will 
pardon  me  if  I  spend  a  single  moment  in  recalling  the 
plots  of  these  two  stories  so  far  as  concerns  this  point  of 
contact.  In  Chaucer's  Pardoner^s  Tale  three  riotous 
young  men  of  Flanders  are  drinking  one  day  at  a  tavern. 
In  the  midst  of  their  merriment  they  hear  the  clink  of  a 


The  Development  ot  Personality     257 

bell  before  a  dead  body  which  is  borne  past  the  door  on 
its  way  to  burial.  They  learn  that  it  is  an  old  compan- 
ion who  is  dead ;  all  three  become  suddenly  inflamed 
with  mortal  anger  against  Death ;  and  they  rush  forth 
resolved  to  slay  him  wherever  they  may  find  him.  Pres- 
ently they  meet  an  old  man.  "  Why  do  you  live  so 
long?"  they  mockingly  inquire  of  him.  "Because," 
says  he, 

"  Deth,  alas,  ne  will  not  han  my  lif ; 
Thus  walke  I  like  a  resteles  caitif, 
And  on  the  ground,  which  is  my  modres  gate, 
I  knocke  with  my  staf  erlich  and  late 
And  say  to  hire  '  Leve  moder,  let  me  in.'  " 

**  Where  is  this  Death  of  whom  you  have  spoken  ?  " 
furiously  demand  the  three  young  men.  The  old  man 
replied,  "  You  will  find  him  under  an  oak  tree  in  yonder 
grove."  The  three  rush  forward ;  and  upon  arriving  at 
the  oak  find  three  bags  full  of  gold  coin.  Overjoyed  at 
their  good  fortune  they  are  afraid  to  carry  the  treasure 
into  town  by  day  lest  they  be  suspected  of  robbery. 
They  therefore  resolve  to  wait  until  night  and  in  the 
meantime  to  make  merry.  For  the  latter  purpose  one  of 
the  three  goes  to  town  after  food  and  drink.  As  soon  as 
he  is  out  of  hearing  the  two  who  remain  under  the  tree 
resolve  to  murder  their  companion  on  his  return  so  that 
they  may  be  the  richer  by  his  portion  of  the  treasure  : 
he,  on  the  other  hand,  whilst  buying  his  victual  in  town, 
shrewdly  drops  a  great  lump  of  poison  into  the  bottle  of 
drink  he  is  to  carry  back,  so  that  his  companions  may 
perish  and  he  take  all. 

To  make  a  long  story  short,  the  whole  plot  is  carried 
out.  As  soon  as  he  who  was  sent  to  town  returns,  his 
companions  fall  upon  him  and  murder  him  ;  they  then 
proceed  merrily  to  eat  and  drink  what  he  has  brought ; 

17 


258  The  English  Novel 

the  poison  does  its  work;  presently  all  three  lie  dead 
under  the  oak  tree  by  the  side  of  the  gold,  and  the  old 
man's  direction  has  proved  true :  they  have  found 
death  under  that  tree.  In  George  Eliot's  story  the 
young  English  Squire  also  finds  death  in  finding  gold. 
You  will  all  remember  how  Dunstan  Cass  in  returning 
late  at  night  from  a  fox-hunt  on  foot  —  for  he  had  killed 
his  horse  in  the  chase  —  finds  himself  near  the  stone  hut 
where  Silas  Marner  the  weaver  has  long  plied  his  trade, 
and  where  he  is  known  to  have  concealed  a  large  sum  in 
gold.  The  young  man  is  extraordinarily  pressed  for 
money ;  he  resolves  to  take  Marner's  gold ;  the  night  is 
dark  and  misty ;  he  makes  his  way  through  the  mud  and 
darkness  to  the  cottage  and  finds  the  door  open,  Marner 
being,  by  the  rarest  of  accidents,  away  from  the  hut. 
The  young  man  quickly  discovers  the  spot  in  the  floor 
where  the  weaver  kept  his  gold ;  he  seizes  the  two  heavy 
leathern  bags  filled  with  guineas,  and  the  chapter  ends, 
**  So  he  stepped  forward  into  the  darkness."  All  this 
occurs  in  Chapter  IV.  The  story  then  proceeds ;  noth- 
ing more  is  heard  of  Dunstan  Cass  in  the  village  for 
many  years ;  the  noise  of  the  robbery  has  long  ago  died 
away ;  Silas  Marner  has  one  day  found  a  golden  head  of 
hair  lying  on  the  very  spot  of  his  floor  where  he  used  to 
finger  his  own  gold  ;  the  little  outcast  who  had  fallen  asleep 
with  her  head  in  this  position,  after  having  wandered 
into  Marner's  cottage,  has  been  brought  up  by  him  to 
womanhood ;  when  one  day,  at  a  critical  period  in  Silas 
Marner's  existence,  it  happens  that  in  draining  some 
lower  grounds  the  pit  of  an  old  stone  quarry,  which  had 
for  years  stood  filled  with  rain-water  near  his  house,  be- 
comes dry,  and  on  the  bottom  is  revealed  a  skeleton  with 
a  leathern  bag  of  gold  in  each  hand.  The  young  man 
plunging  out  into  the  dark,  laden  with  his  treasure,  had 


The  Development  of  Personality      259 

fallen  in  and  lain  for  all  these  years  to  be  afterwards 
brought  to  light  as  another  phase  of  the  frequent  iden- 
tity between  death  and  gold.  Here,  too,  one  is  obliged 
to  remember  those  doubly  dreadful  words  in  Romeo  and 
Juliety  where  Romeo  having  with  difficulty  bought  poison 
from  the  apothecary,  cries  : 

"  There  is  thy  gold ;  worse  poison  to  men's  souls, 
Doing  more  murder  in  this  loathsome  world 
Than  these  poor  compounds  which  thou  mayst  not  sell ; 
I  sell  thee  poison,  thou  hast  sold  me  none. 
Farewell ;  buy  food  and  get  thyself  in  flesh." 

I  must  also  instance  one  little  passing  picture  in  Silas 
Marner  which,  though  extremely  fanciful,  is  yet  a  charm- 
ing type  of  some  of  the  greatest  and  most  characteristic 
work  that  George  Eliot  has  done.  Silas  Marner  had 
been  a  religious  enthusiast  of  an  obscure  sect  of  a  small 
manufacturing  town  of  England ;  suddenly  a  false  accu- 
sation of  theft  in  which  the  circumstantial  evidence 
was  strong  against  him  brings  him  into  disgrace  among 
his  fellow- disciples ;  with  his  whole  faith  in  God  and 
man  shattered  he  leaves  his  town,  wanders  over  to  the 
village  of  Raveloe,  begins  aimlessly  to  pursue  his  trade 
of  weaving,  presently  is  paid  for  some  work  in  gold ;  in 
handling  the  coin  he  is  smit  with  the  fascination  of  its 
yellow  radiance,  and  presently  we  find  him  pouring  out 
all  the  prodigious  intensity  of  his  nature,  which  had 
previously  found  a  fitter  field  in  religion,  in  the  miser's 
passion.  Working  day  and  night,  while  yet  a  young  man 
he  fills  his  two  leathern  bags  with  gold;  and  George 
Eliot  gives  us  some  vivid  pictures  of  how,  when  his  day's 
work  would  be  done,  he  would  brighten  up  the  fire  in 
his  stone  hut  which  stood  at  the  edge  of  the  village, 
eagerly  lift  up  the  particular  brick  of  the  stone  floor 
under  which  he  kept  his  treasure  concealed,  pour  out  the 


26o  The  English  Novel 

bright  yellow  heaps  of  coin  and  run  his  long  white  fingers 
through  them  with  all  the  miser's  ecstasy.  But  after 
he  is  robbed  the  utter  blank  in  his  soul  —  and  one  can 
imagine  such  a  blank  in  such  a  soul,  for  he  was  essen- 
tially religious  —  becomes  strangely  filled.  One  day  a 
poor  woman  leading  her  little  golden-haired  child  is 
making  her  way  along  the  road  past  Mamer's  cottage ; 
she  is  the  wife,  by  private  marriage,  of  the  Squire's  eldest 
son,  and  after  having  been  cruelly  treated  by  him  for 
years  has  now  desperately  resolved  to  appear  with  her 
child  at  a  great  merry-making  which  goes  on  at  the 
Squire's  to-day,  there  to  expose  all  and  demand  justice. 
It  so  happens  however  that  in  her  troubles  she  has 
become  an  opium-taker ;  just  as  she  is  passing  Marner's 
cottage  the  effect  of  an  unusually  large  dose  becomes 
overpowering ;  she  lies  down  and  falls  off  into  a  stupor 
which  this  time  ends  in  death.  Meantime  the  little 
golden-haired  girl  innocently  totters  into  the  open  door 
of  Mamer's  cottage  during  his  absence,  presently  lies 
down,  places  her  head  with  all  its  golden  wealth  upon 
the  very  brick  which  Marner  used  to  lift  up  in  order  to 
bring  his  gold  to  light,  and  so  falls  asleep,  while  a  ray  of 
sunlight  strikes  through  the  window  and  illuminates  the 
little  one's  head.  Marner  now  returns ;  he  is  dazed  at 
beholding  what  seems  almost  to  be  another  pile  of  gold 
at  the  familiar  spot  on  the  floor.  He  takes  this  new 
treasure  into  his  hungry  heart  and  brings  up  the  little 
girl  who  becomes  a  beautiful  woman  and  faithful  daughter 
to  him.  His  whole  character  now  changes  and  the 
hardness  of  his  previous  brutal  misanthropy  softens  into 
something  at  least  approaching  humanity.  Now  it  is 
fairly  characteristic  of  George  Eliot  that  she  constantly 
places  before  us  lives  which  change  in  a  manner  of  which 
this  is  typical :  that  is  to  say,  she  is  constantly  showing 


The  Development  of  Personality      261 

us  intense  and  hungry  spirits  first  wasting  their  intensity 
and  hunger  upon  that  which  is  unworthy,  often  from 
pure  ignorance  of  anything  worthier,  then  finding  where 
love  is  worthy,  and  thereafter  loving  larger  loves,  and 
living  larger  lives. 

Is  not  this  substantially  the  experience  of  Janet 
Dempster ;  of  Adam  Bede,  replacing  the  love  of  Hetty 
with  that  of  Dinah  Morris;  of  Romola;  of  Dorothea; 
of  Gwendolen  Harleth  ? 

This  last  name  brings  us  directly  to  the  work  which 
we  were  specially  to  study  to-day.  George  Eliot's  novels 
have  all  striking  relationships  among  themselves  which 
cause  them  to  fall  into  various  groups  according  to 
various  points  of  view.  There  is  one  point  however  from 
which  her  entire  work  divides  itself  into  two  groups,  of 
which  one  includes  the  whole  body  of  her  writings  up  to 
1876  :  the  other  group  consists  solely  oi Daniel Deronda. 
This  classification  is  based  on  the  fact  that  all  the  works 
in  the  first  group  concern  the  life  of  a  time  which  is  past. 
It  is  only  in  Daniel  Deronda,  after  she  has  been  writing 
for  more  than  twenty  years,  that  George  Eliot  first 
ventures  to  deal  with  English  society  of  the  present  day. 
To  this  important  claim  upon  our  interest  may  be  added 
a  further  circumstance  which  will  in  the  sequel  develop 
into  great  significance.  Daniel  Deronda  has  had  the 
singular  fate  of  being  completely  misunderstood  to  such 
a  degree  that  the  greatest  admirers  of  George  Eliot 
have  even  ventured  to  call  it  a  failure,  while  the  Philis- 
tines have  rioted  in  abusing  Gwendolen  Harleth  as  a 
weak  and  rather  disagreeable  personage,  Mirah  and 
Daniel  as  unmitigated  prigs,  and  the  plot  as  an  absurd 
attempt  to  awaken  interest  in  what  is  called  the  religious 
patriotism  of  the  Jews.  This  comparative  failure  oi  Daniel 
Deronda  to  please  current  criticism,  and  even  the  ardent 


262  The  English  Novel 

admirers  of  George  Eliot,  so  clearly  opens  up  what  is  to 
my  view  a  singular  and  lamentable  weakness  in  certain  vital 
portions  of  the  structure  of  our  society  that  I  have  thought 
I  could  not  render  better  service  than  by  conducting  our 
analysis  of  Daniel  Deronda  so  as  to  make  it  embrace 
some  of  the  most  common  of  the  objections  urged 
against  that  work.  Let  us  recall  in  largest  possible  out- 
line the  movement  of  Daniel  Deronda.  This  can  be  done 
in  a  surprisingly  brief  statement.  The  book  really  con- 
cerns two  people ;  one  is  Gwendolen  Harleth,  a  beautiful 
English  girl,  brought  up  with  all  those  delicate  tastes 
and  accomplishments  which  we  understand  when  we 
think  of  the  highest  English  refinement, — wayward  — 
mainly  because  she  has  seen  as  yet  no  way  that  seemed 
better  to  follow  than  her  own  —  and  ambitious,  but  evi- 
dently with  that  sacred  discontent  which  desires  the  best 
and  which  will  only  be  small  when  its  horizon  contains 
but  small  objects.  The  other  main  personage  is  Daniel 
Deronda,  who  has  been  brought  up  as  an  Englishman  of 
rank,  has  a  striking  face  and  person,  a  natural  love  for  all 
that  is  beautiful  and  noble,  a  good  sense  that  enables  him 
to  see  through  the  banalities  of  English  political  life  and 
to  shrink  from  involving  his  own  existence  in  such  lit- 
tleness, and  who,  after  some  preliminary  account  of  his 
youth  in  the  earlier  chapters,  is  placed  before  us  early 
in  the  first  book  as  a  young  man  of  twenty  who  is  seri- 
ously asking  himself  whether  life  is  worth  living. 

It  so  happens  however  that  presently  Gwendolen  Har- 
leth is  found  asking  herself  this  same  question.  Tempted 
by  a  sudden  reverse  of  fortune,  by  the  chance  to  take 
care  of  her  mother,  and  one  must  add  by  her  own  desire 
—  guilty  enough  in  such  a  connection  —  for  plenty  of 
horses  to  ride  and  for  all  the  other  luxurious  accompa- 
niments which  form   so   integral  a  portion   of  modern 


The  Development  of  Personality      263 

English  life ;  driven,  too,  by  what  one  must  not  hesitate  to 
call  the  cowardliest  shrinking  from  the  name  and  posi- 
tion of  a  governess;  conciHated  by  a  certain  infinite 
appearance  of  lordliness  which  in  Grandcourt  is  mainly 
nothing  more  than  a  blas6  brutality  which  has  exhausted 
desire,  —  Gwendolen  accepts  the  hand  of  Grandcourt, 
quickly  discovers  him  to  be  an  unspeakable  brute,  suf- 
fers a  thousand  deaths  from  remorse  and  is  soon  found  — 
as  is  just  said  —  wringing  her  hands  and  asking  if  life  is 
worth  living. 

Now  the  sole  purpose  and  outcome  of  the  book  lie  in 
its  answers  to  the  questions  of  these  two  young  people. 
It  does  answer  them,  and  answers  them  satisfactorily. 
On  the  one  hand,  Gwendolen  Harleth,  in  the  course  of 
her  married  life,  is  several  times  thrown  with  Daniel 
Deronda ;  his  loftiness,  his  straightforwardness,  his  fervor, 
his  frankness,  his  general  passion  for  whatsoever  things 
are  large  and  fine,  —  in  a  word,  his  goodness  —  form  a 
complete  revelation  to  her.  She  suddenly  discovers  that 
life  is  not  only  worth  living  but  that  the  possibility  of 
making  one's  life  a  good  life  invests  it  with  a  romantic  in- 
terest whose  depth  is  infinitely  beyond  that  of  all  the 
society  pleasures  which  had  hitherto  formed  her  horizon. 
On  the  other  hand,  Daniel  Deronda  discovers  that  he  is 
a  Jew  by  birth,  and,  fired  by  the  visions  of  a  fervent 
Hebrew  friend,  he  resolves  to  devote  his  life  and  the 
wealth  that  has  fallen  to  him  from  various  sources  to  the 
cause  of  reestablishing  his  people  in  their  former  Eastern 
home.  Thus  also  for  him,  instead  of  presenting  the 
dreary  doubt  whether  it  is  worth  living,  life  opens  up  a 
boundless  and  fascinating  field  for  energies  of  the  loftiest 
kind. 

Place,  then,  clearly  before  your  minds  these  two  dis- 
tinct strands  of  story.     One  of  these  might  be  called  The 


264  The  English  Novel 

Repentance  of  Gwendolen  Harleth,  and  this  occupies 
much  the  larger  portion  of  the  work.  The  other  might 
be  called  The  Mission  of  Daniel  Deronda.  These  two 
strands  are,  as  we  have  just  seen,  united  into  one  artistic 
thread  by  the  organic  purpose  of  the  book,  which  is  to 
furnish  a  fair  and  satisfactory  answer  to  the  common 
question  over  which  these  two  young  protagonists 
struggle:  "Is  life  worth  living?"  The  painting  of 
this  repentance  of  Gwendolen  Harleth,  the  develop- 
ment of  this  beautiful  young  aristocrat  Daniel  Deronda 
into  a  great  and  strong  man  consecrated  to  a  holy  pur- 
pose :  all  this  is  done  with  such  skillful  reproduction  of 
contemporary  English  life,  with  such  a  wealth  of  flesh- 
and- blood  characters,  with  an  art  altogether  so  subtle, 
so  analytic,  yet  so  warm  and  so  loving  withal,  that  if  I 
were  asked  for  the  most  significant,  the  most  tender,  the 
most  pious  and  altogether  the  most  uplifting  of  modern 
books  it  seems  to  me  I  should  specify  Daniel  Deronda. 

It  was  remarked  two  lectures  ago  that  Shakspere  had 
never  drawn  a  repentance ;  and  if  we  consider  for  a 
single  moment  what  is  required  in  order  to  paint  such 
a  long  and  intricate  struggle  as  that  through  which  our 
poor,  beautiful  Gwendolen  passed  we  are  helped  towards 
a  clear  view  of  some  reasons  at  least  why  this  is  so.  For 
upon  examining  the  instances  of  repentance  alleged  by 
those  who  disagree  with  me  on  this  point  —  as  mentioned 
in  my  last  lecture  —  I  find  that  the  real  difference  of  opin- 
ion between  us  is,  not  as  to  whether  Shakspere  ever  drew 
a  repentance,  but  as  to  what  is  a  repentance.  There 
certainly  are  in  Shakspere  pictures  of  regret  for  inju- 
ries done  to  loved  ones  under  mistake  or  under  passion, 
and  sometimes  this  regret  is  long-drawn.  But  surely 
such  reversal  of  feeling  is  only  that  which  would  be  felt 
by  any  man  of  ordinarily  manful  make  upon  discovering 


The  Development  of  Personality      265 

that  he  had  greatly  wronged  any  one,  particularly  a  loved 
one.  It  is  to  this  complexion  that  all  the  alleged  in- 
stances of  repentances  in  Shakspere  come  at  last.  No- 
where do  we  find  any  special  portrayal  of  a  character 
engaged  to  its  utmost  depths  in  that  complete  subver- 
sion of  the  old  by  the  new,  —  that  total  substitution  of 
some  higher  motive  for  the  whole  existing  body  of  emo- 
tions and  desires,  —  that  emergence  out  of  the  twilight 
world  of  selfishness  into  the  large  and  sunlit  plains  of  a 
love  which  does  not  turn  upon  self, 

**  Which  bends  not  with  the  remover  to  remove," 
Nor  *'  alters  when  it  alteration  finds." 

For  example,  Leontes,  in  Winter's  Tale^  who  is  cited 
as  a  chief  instance  of  Shakspere 's  repentances,  quite 
clearly  shows  by  word  and  act  that  his  regret  is  mainly 
a  sense  of  personal  loss,  not  a  change  of  character.  He 
is  sorrowful  not  so  much  because  he  has  sinned  as 
because  he  has  hurt  himself.  In  Act  V,  just  before  the 
catastrophe  which  restores  him  his  wife  and  daughter,  we 
find  him  exclaiming : 

"  Good  Paulina 
O  that  ever  I 
Had  squared  me  to  thy  counsel !    Then  even  now 
I  might  have  looked  upon  my  queen's  full  eyes, 
Have  taken  treasure  from  her  lips  —  " 

And  again  in  the  same  scene,  where  Florizel  and 
Perdita  have  been  brought  before  him,  he  cries: 

"  What  might  I  have  been, 
Might  I  a  son  and  daughter  now  have  look'd  on, 
Such  goodly  things  as  you  I " 

In  these  it  is  clear  that  Leontes  is  speaking  from  per« 
sonal  regret ;  there  is  no  thought  here  of  that  total  ex- 
pansion of  an  ego  into  a  burning  love  of  all  other  egos. 


266  The  English  Novel 

implied  in  the  term  repentance,  as  I  have  used  it.  Simi- 
larly, King  Lear,  who  has  also  been  cited  as  an  example 
of  Shakspere's  repentances,  is  simply  an  example  of 
regret  for  the  foulest  of  wrongs  done  in  a  moment  of 
silly  passion.  After  the  poor  old  man,  upon  regaining 
his  consciousness  under  Cordelia's  tender  ministrations, 
is  captured  together  with  Cordelia,  in  Scene  III  of  Act 
V,  Cordelia  says,  as  if  to  comfort  him  : 

"  We  are  not  the  first 
Who  with  best  meaning  have  incurred  the  worst. 
For  thee,  oppressed  king,  am  I  cast  down. 

Shall  we  not  see  these  daughters  and  these  sisters  ? " 
Lear.  —  "  No,  no,  no,  no !     Come,  let's  away  to  prison ; 
We  two  alone  will  sing  like  birds  i'  the  cage ; 
When  thou  dost  ask  me  blessing  I'll  kneel  down 
And  ask  of  thee  forgiveness." 

Here,  clearly  enough,  is  regret  for  his  injury  to  Cor- 
delia, but,  quite  as  clearly,  no  general  state  of  repentance  ; 
and  in  the  very  few  other  words  uttered  by  the  old  king 
before  the  play  ends  surely  nothing  indicating  such  a 
state  appears.  Of  all  the  instances  suggested  only  one 
involves  anything  like  the  process  of  character-change 
which  I  have  called  a  repentance,  such  as  Gwendolen 
Harleth's,  for  example ;  but  this  one,  unfortunately,  is 
not  drawn  by  Shakspere  :  it  is  only  mentioned  as  having 
occurred.  This  is  the  repentance  of  Duke  Frederick 
in  As  you  Like  it.  Just  at  the  end  of  that  play,  when 
Orlando  and  Rosalind,  Oliver  and  Celia  and  all  the  rest 
have  unravelled  all  their  complications,  and  when  every- 
thing that  can  be  called  plot  in  the  play  is  finished,  the 
son  of  old  Sir  Rowland  appears  before  the  company  in 
the  wood  and  calls  out : 

"  Let  me  have  audience  for  a  word  or  two. 


The  Development  of  Personality      267 

'  Duke  Frederick  hearing  how  that  every  day 
Men  of  great  worth  resorted  to  this  forest 
Addressed  a  mighty  power  .  .  . 

purposely  to  take 
His  brother  here  and  put  him  to  the  sword. 
And  to  the  skirts  of  this  wild  wood  he  came 
Where,  meeting  with  an  old  religious  man, 
After  some  questions  with  him  was  converted 
Both  from  his  enterprise  and  from  the  world ; 
His  crown  bequeathing  to  his  banished  brother, 
And  all  their  lands  restored  to  them  again 
That  were  with  him  exiled." 


Here  we  have  indeed  a  true  repentance,  but  this  is  all 
we  have  of  it ;  the  passage  I  have  read  contains  the 
whole  picture. 

If  we  now  go  on  and  ask  ourselves  why  these  fasci- 
nating phenomena  of  repentance  which  George  Eliot  has 
treated  with  such  success  never  engaged  Shakspere's 
energy,  we  come  at  the  very  first  step  upon  a  limitation 
of  the  drama  as  opposed  to  the  novel  which,  in  the 
strongest  way,  confirms  the  view  I  was  at  such  pains  to 
set  forth  in  my  earlier  lectures,  of  that  necessity  for  a 
freer  form  than  the  dramatic  which  arises  from  the  more 
complete  relations  between  modern  personalities  and 
which  has  really  developed  the  novel  out  of  the  drama. 

How,  for  instance,  could  Shakspere  paint  the  yeas 
and  nays,  the  twists,  the  turns,  the  intricacies  of  Gwen- 
dolen Harleth's  thought  during  the  long  weeks  while 
she  was  debating  whether  she  should  accept  Grandcourt  ? 
The  whole  action  of  this  drama,  you  observe,  is  confined 
within  the  small  round  head  of  the  girl  herself.  How 
could  such  action  be  brought  before  the  audience  of  a 
play  ?  The  only  hope  would  be  in  a  prolonged  soliloquy, 
for  these  are  thoughts  which  no  young  woman  would 
naturally  communicate  to  any  one ;  but  what  audience 


268  The  English  Novel 

could  stand  so  prolonged  a  soliloquy,  even  if  any 
character  could  be  found  in  whom  it  would  be  natural? 
And  sometimes,  too,  the  situation  is  so  subtly  complex 
that  Gwendolen  is  soliloquizing  in  such  a  manner  that 
we,  the  audience,  hear  her  while  Grandcourt,  who  is 
standing  by,  does  not. 


"  *  I  used  to  think  archery  was  a  great  bore,*  Grandcourt 
began.  He  spoke  with  a  fine  accent,  but  with  a  certain 
broken  drawl,  as  of  a  distinguished  personage  with  a  distin- 
guished cold  in  his  chest. 

"  *  Are  you  converted  to-day  ? '  said  Gwendolen. 

"  (Pause,  during  which  she  imagined  various  degrees  and 
modes  of  opinion  about  herself  that  might  be  entertained  by 
Grandcourt.) 

"  'Yes,  since  I  saw  you  shooting.  In  things  of  this  sort 
one  generally  sees  people  missing  and  simpering.' 

"  *  And  do  you  care  about  the  turf  ?  or  is  that  among  the 
things  you  have  left  off  ? ' 

"  (Pause,  during  which  Gwendolen  thought  that  a  man  of 
extremely  calm  cold  manners  might  be  less  disagreeable  as 
a  husband  than  other  men,  and  not  likely  to  interfere  with 
his  wife's  preferences.) 

" '  You  would  perhaps  like  tiger-hunting  or  pig-sticking.  I 
saw  some  of  that  for  a  season  or  two  in  the  East.  Every- 
thing here  is  poor  stuff  after  that.' 

" '  Vou  are  fond  of  danger  then  ?  * 

"  (Pause,  during  which  Gwendolen  speculated  on  the  prob- 
ability that  the  men  of  coldest  manners  were  the  most  ad- 
venturous, and  felt  the  strength  of  her  own  insight,  supposing 
the  question  had  to  be  decided.) 

"  ♦  One  must  have  something  or  other.  But  one  gets  used 
to  it.' 

"  'I  begin  to  think  I  am  very  fortunate,  because  everything 
is  new  to  me  :  it  is  only  that  I  can't  get  enough  of  it.    I  am 


The  Development  of  Personality      269 

not  used  to  anything  except  being  dull,  which  I  should  like 
to  leave  off  as  you  have  left  off  shooting.' 

"(Pause,  during  which  it  occurred  to  Gwendolen  that  a 
man  of  cold  and  distinguished  manners  might  possibly  be  a 
dull  companion ;  but  on  the  other  hand  she  thought  that  most 
persons  were  dull,  that  she  had  not  observed  husbands  to  be 
companions,  and  that  after  all  she  was  not  going  to  accept 
Grandcourt.) 

"'Why  are  you  dull?' 

"  *  This  is  a  dreadful  neighbourhood,  there  is  nothing  to 
be  done  in  it.     That  is  why  I  practised  my  archery.' 

"  (Pause,  during  which  Gwendolen  reflected  that  the  life  of 
an  unmarried  woman  who  could  not  go  about  and  had  no 
command  of  anything,  must  necessarily  be  dull  through  all 
the  degrees  of  comparison  as  time  went  on.) 

"  *  You  have  made  yourself  queen  of  it.  I  imagine  you  will 
carry  the  first  prize.' 

"  '  I  don't  know  that.  I  have  great  rivals.  Did  you  not 
observe  how  well  Miss  Arrowpoint  shot  ? ' 

"  (Pause,  wherein  Gwendolen  was  thinking  that  men  had 
been  known  to  choose  some  one  else  than  the  woman  they 
most  admired,  and  recalled  several  experiences  of  that  kind 
in  novels.) " 

At  this  point  we  come  upon  an  element  of  difference 
between  the  novel  and  the  drama  which  has  not  hitherto 
been  fairly  appreciated,  so  far  as  I  know.  Consider  for 
a  moment  the  wholly  supernatural  power  which  is  neces- 
sarily involved  in  the  projet  of  thus  showing  the  most 
secret  workings  of  the  mind  and  heart  of  this  young 
girl,  Gwendolen  Harleth !  In  real  life  what  power  less 
than  God's  can  make  me  see  the  deepest  thought  and 
feeling  of  a  fellow-creature?  But  since  the  novel  is  al- 
ways a  transcript  of  real,  or  at  any  rate  of  possible,  life 
you  observe  that  wherever  these  workings  of  heart  and 
brain  are  thus  laid  bare  the  tacit  supposition  is,  in  plain 
terms,  that  God  is  the  writer,  or  that  the  writer  is  a  god. 


270  The  English  Novel 

In  the  drama  no  supposition  is  necessary  because  here 
we  become  acquainted  with  only  such  matters  as  are 
shown  us  in  the  ordinary  way,  by  scenery  or  by  the 
speech  or  gesture  of  the  actor.  This  consideration  seems 
to  me  to  hft  the  novel  to  the  very  highest  and  holiest 
plane  of  creative  effort ;  he  who  takes  up  the  pen  of  the 
novelist  assumes,  as  to  that  novel,  to  take  up  along  with  it 
the  omniscience  of  God.  He  proposes,  in  eifect,  to  bring 
about  the  revelations  of  Judgment  Day  long  before  the 
trumpet  has  sounded.  George  Eliot  shows  us  the  play 
of  Gwendolen  Harleth's  soul  with  the  same  uncom- 
promising fullness  with  which  the  most  literal  believer 
expects  to  give  account  of  the  deeds  done  in  the  body  at 
the  last  day. 

In  contemplating  this  vast  ascent  from  the  attitude  of 
the  dramatist  to  that  of  the  novelist — the  dramatist  is  a 
man ;  the  novelist,  as  to  that  novel,  is  a  god  —  we  are 
contemplating  simply  another  phase  of  the  growth  of 
man  from  Shakspere  to  George  Eliot. 

And  we  reach  still  another  view  of  that  growth  when 
we  reflect  that  even  if  Shakspere  could  have  overcome 
the  merely  mechanical  difficulty  of  presenting  a  repen- 
tance without  overmuch  soliloquy,  he  would  probably 
have  found  but  poorly-paying  houses  at  the  Globe 
Theatre  to  witness  any  drama  so  purely  spiritual  as  that 
which  George  Eliot  has  shown  us  going  on  upon  the 
little,  ill-lighted  stage  of  a  young  girl's  consciousness. 
Just  as  we  found  that  the  prodigious  advance  in  the  near- 
ness of  man  to  his  fellow  from  the  time  of  ^schylus  to 
that  of  George  Eliot  was  impHed  in  the  fact  that  the  lat- 
ter could  gather  an  interested  audience  about  a  couple  of 
commonplace  children  (as  in  The  Mill  on  the  Floss), 
whilst  the  former  required  the  larger  stimulus  of  Titanic 
quarrel  and  angry  Jove,  so  here  we  have  reached  an  evi- 


The  Development  of  Personality      271 

dence  of  still  more  subtle  advance  as  between  the  times 
of  Shakespere  and  of  George  Eliot  when  we  find  the 
latter  gathering  a  great  audience  about  this  little  mward, 
actionless,  complex  drama  of  Gwendolen  Harleth,  while 
we  reflect  that  Shakspere  must  have  his  stimulant  pas- 
sion, his  crime,  his  patriotism,  and  the  like,  as  the  only 
attracting  motives.  In  truth  I  find  what  seems  to  be  a 
cunning  indication  that  George  Eliot  herself  did  not  feel 
quite  sure  of  her  audience  for  this  same  little  play.  At 
the  end  of  Chapter  XI  she  breaks  off  from  a  description 
of  one  of  Gwendolen's  capricious  turns,  and  as  if  in 
apologetic  defence  says : 

"  Could  there  be  a  slenderer,  more  insignificant  thread  in 
human  history  than  this  consciousness  of  a  girl,  busy  with 
her  small  inferences  of  the  way  in  which  she  could  make  her 
life  pleasant  ?  —  in  a  time,  too,  when  ideas  were  with  fresh 
vigour  making  armies  of  themselves  and  the  universal  kinship 
was  declaring  itself  fiercely ;  .  .  .  a  time  when  the  soul  of 
man  was  waking  to  pulses  which  had  for  centuries  been 
beating  in  him  unheard.  .  .  .  What,  in  the  midst  of  that 
mighty  drama,  are  girls  and  their  blind  visions  ?  They  are 
the  Yea  or  Nay  of  that  good  for  which  men  are  enduring  or 
fighting.  In  these  delicate  vessels  is  borne  onward  through 
the  ages  the  treasure  of  human  affections." 

Thus  it  appears  that  for  Shakspere  to  draw  such 
repentances  as  Gwendolen  Harleth's  was  not  only  diffi- 
cult from  the  playwright's  point  of  view  but  premature 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  world's  growth.  In  truth 
I  suspect  if  we  had  time  to  pursue  this  matter  that  we 
should  find  it  leading  us  into  some  very  instructive 
views  of  certain  rugged  breaking-off  places  in  Shaks- 
pere. I  suppose  we  must  consider  the  limitations  of  his 
time,  though  it  is  just  possible  they  may  be  limitations 
of  his  genius,  also.     We  should  presently  find  ourselves 


272  The  English  Novel 

asking  further  how  it  is  that  Shakspere  not  only  never 
drew  a  great  reformation,  but  never  painted  a  great 
reformer  ?  It  seems  a  natural  question  :  How  is  it  that 
it  is  Milton  and  not  Shakspere  who  has  treated  the 
subject  of  Paradise  Lost  and  Regained ;  how  is  it  that 
the  first-class  subject  was  left  for  the  second-class  genius  ? 
We  all  know  how  Milton  has  failed  in  what  he  intended 
with  his  poem,  and  how  astonished  he  would  be  at  find- 
ing that  the  only  one  of  his  characters  which  has  taken 
any  real  hold  upon  the  world  is  his  Satan.  It  seems 
irresistible  to  ask  ourselves  why  might  not  our  most 
eloquent  tongue  have  treated  our  most  lofty  theme? 
Or,  if  we  should  find  special  reasons  in  the  temper  of 
his  time  why  Shakspere  could  not  or  should  not  have 
treated  this  theme,  we  may  still  ask,  why  did  he  never 
paint  for  us  one  of  those  men  who  seem  too  large  to  be 
bounded  in  their  affections  merely  by  limits  of  country, 
but  who  loved  and  worked  for  the  whole  world,  Buddha, 
2^roaster,  Mahomet,  Socrates,  Luther;  nay,  why  may 
not  the  master  have  given  us  a  master's  picture  of  Chris- 
topher Columbus  or  even  of  John  Vannini,  the  scientific 
martyr,  or  even  of  the  fantastic  Giordano  Bruno  who 
against  all  warnings  boldly  wandered  from  town  to  town 
defending  his  doctrines  until  he  was  burned,  in  1600? 
And  if  any  of  the  academicians  now  in  my  audience 
should  incline  to  pursue  this  strange  psychologico-literary 
problem,  I  make  no  doubt  that  useful  light  would  be 
cast  upon  the  search  if  you  should  consider  along  with 
these  questions  the  further  inquiries  why  Shakspere  never 
mentions  either  of  the  two  topics  which  must  have  been 
foremost  in  the  talk  of  his  time  :  namely,  America  and 
tobacco.  Among  all  the  allusions  to  contemporary  mat- 
ter in  his  plays  the  nearest  he  ever  comes  to  America 
is  the  single  instance  in   The  Tempest  where  Ariel  is 


The  Development  of  Personality      273 

mentioned  as  "  fetching  dew  from  the  still-vexed  Ber- 
moothes  "  (Bermudas).  As  for  tobacco  :  although  pretty 
much  all  London  must  have  been  smoking  vigorously 
about  the  time  Shakspere  was  writing  Much  Ado  About 
Nothings  and  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor ;  although 
certainly  to  a  countryman  not  a  great  while  out  of  the 
woods  of  Warwickshire  it  must  have  been  the  oddest  of 
sights  to  see  people  sucking  at  hollow  tubes  and  puffing 
smoke  from  their  mouths  and  nostrils ;  although,  too,  the 
comedies  of  his  contemporary  Ben  Jonson  are  often 
cloudy  with  tobacco  smoke :  nevertheless  there  is  not, 
so  far  as  my  recollection  goes,  the  faintest  allusion  to 
the  drinking  of  tobacco  (as  it  was  then  called)  in  the 
whole  body  of  his  writings.  Now  all  these  omissions 
are  significant  because  conspicuous ;  always,  in  studying 
genius,  we  learn  as  much  from  what  it  has  not  done,  as 
from  what  it  has  done ;  and  if  research  should  succeed 
in  arranging  these  neglects  from  any  common  point  of 
view,  it  is  possible  that  something  new  might  still  be 
said  about  Shakspere. 

But,  to  return  to  Daniel  Deronda.  A  day  or  two  after 
George  Eliot's  death  the  Saturday  Review  contained  an 
elaborate  editorial  summary  of  her  work.  For  some 
special  ends,  permit  me  to  read  so  much  of  it  as  relates 
to  the  book  now  under  consideration.  "  Daniel  Deronda 
is  devoted  to  the  whimsical  object  of  glorifying  real  or 
imaginary  Jewish  aspirations.  It  cannot  be  doubted  that 
so  fantastic  a  form  of  enthusiasm  was  suggested  by  some 
personal  predilection  or  association.  A  devotion  to  the 
Jewish  cause  unaccompanied  by  any  kind  of  interest  in 
the  Jewish  religion  is  not  likely  to  command  general 
sympathy  ;  but  even  if  the  purpose  of  the  story  had  been 
as  useful  as  it  is  chimerical  and  absurd,  the  inherent  fault 
of  didactic  fiction  would  scarcely  have  been  diminished. 

18 


274  The  English  Novel 

...  It  is  significant  that  when  George  Eliot  deliberately 
preferred  the  function  of  teaching  to  her  proper  office 
of  amusing  she  sacrificed  her  power  of  instruction  as 
well  as  her  creative  faculty." 

Of  course,  in  general,  no  man  in  his  senses  thinks  of 
taking  in  serious  earnest  every  proposition  in  the  Satur- 
day Review.  It  is  an  odd  character  which  long  ago 
assumed  the  role  of  teasing  English  society  by  gravely 
advancing  any  monstrous  assertion  at  random  and 
laughing  in  its  sleeve  at  the  elaborate  replies  with  which 
this  assertion  would  be  honored  by  weak  and  unsus- 
pecting people.  But  its  position  upon  this  particular 
point  of  Daniel  Deronda  happens  to  be  supported  by 
similar  views  among  her  professed  admirers. 

Even  The  Spectator  in  its  obituary  notice  completely 
mistakes  the  main  purpose  of  Daniel  Deronda^  in  de- 
claring that  "  she  takes  religious  patriotism  for  the  sub- 
ject ;  "  although,  as  I  have  just  indicated,  surely  the  final 
aim  of  the  book  is  to  furnish  to  two  young  modern  peo- 
ple a  motive  sufficient  to  make  life  not  only  worth  living 
but  fascinating ;  and  of  the  two  distinct  plots  in  the  book 
one  —  and  the  one  to  which  most  attention  is  paid  — 
hinges  upon  Gwendolen  Harleth's  repentance,  while  it  is 
only  the  other  and  slighter  which  is  concerned  with  what 
these  papers  call  religious  patriotism  ;  and  here  the  phrase 
"  religious  patriotism  "  if  we  examine  it  is  not  only 
meaningless  —  what  is  religious  patriotism?  —  but  has  the 
effect  of  dwarfing  the  two  grand  motives  which  are 
given  to  Daniel  Deronda :  namely,  religion  ««^patriotism. 

Upon  bringing  together,  however,  all  the  objections 
which  have  been  urged  against  Daniel  Deronda^  I  think 
they  may  be  classified  and  discussed  under  two  main 
heads.  First  it  is  urged  that  Daniel  Deronda  and  Mirah 
— and  even  Gwendolen  Harleth,  after  her  change   of 


The  Development  of  Personality      275 

spirit  —  are  all  prigs ;  secondly,  it  is  urged  that  the  moral 
purpose  of  the  book  has  overweighted  the  art  of  it,  that 
what  should  have  been  pure  nature  and  beauty  have  been 
obscured  by  didacticism,  thus  raising  the  whole  question 
of  Art  for  Art's  sake  which  has  so  mournfully  divided 
the  modern  artistic  world.  This  last  objection,  opening, 
as  it  does,  the  whole  question  of  how  far  fervent  moral 
purpose  injures  the  work  of  the  true  artist,  is  a  matter  of 
such  living  importance  in  the  present  state  of  our  art, 
particularly  of  our  literary  art;  it  so  completely  sums 
up  all  these  contributory  items  of  thought  which  have 
been  gradually  emerging  in  these  lectures  regarding  the 
growth  of  human  personality  together  with  the  correla- 
tive development  of  the  novel ;  and  the  discussions  con- 
cerning it  are  conducted  upon  such  small  planes  and 
from  such  low  and  confusing  points  of  view :  that  I  will 
ask  to  devote  my  next  lecture  to  a  faithful  endeavor  to 
get  all  the  light  possible  upon  the  vexed  matter  of  Art 
for  Art's  sake,  and  to  showing  how  triumphantly  George 
Eliot's  Daniel  Deronda  seems  to  settle  that  entire  debate 
with  the  most  practical  of  answers. 

Meantime  in  discussing  the  other  class  of  objections 
which  we  managed  to  generalize,  to  wit  that  the  three 
main  characters  in  Daniel  Deronda  are  prigs,  a  serious 
difficulty  lies  in  the  impossibility  of  learning  from  these 
objectors  exactly  what  is  a  prig.  And  I  confess  I  should 
be  warned  off  from  any  attempt  at  discussion  by  this 
initial  difficulty  if  I  did  not  find  great  light  thrown  on 
the  subject  by  discovering  that  the  two  objections  of 
prig-ism  and  that  of  didacticism  already  formulated  are 
really  founded  upon  the  same  cunning  weakness  in  our 
current  culture.  The  truth  is,  George  Eliot's  book, 
Daniel  Deronda,  is  so  sharp  a  sermon  that  it  has  made 
the  whole  English  contemporary  society  uncomfortable. 


276  The  English  Novel 

It  is  curious  and  instructive  to  see  how  unable  all  the 
objectors  have  been  to  put  their  fingers  upon  the  exact 
source  of  this  discomfort ;  so  that  in  their  bewilderment 
one  lays  it  to  prig-ism,  another  to  didacticism,  and  so  on. 
That  a  state  of  society  should  exist  in  which  such  a  piece 
of  corruption  as  Grandcourt  should  be  not  only  the 
leader  but  the  crazing  fascination  and  ideal  of  the  most 
delicate  and  fastidious  young  women  in  that  society; 
that  a  state  of  society  should  exist  in  which  those  pure 
young  girls  whom  George  Eliot  describes  as  "  the  deli- 
cate vessels  in  which  man's  affections  are  hoarded  through 
the  ages,"  should  be  found  manoeuvring  for  this  Grand- 
court  infamy,  plotting  to  be  Grandcourt's  wife,  instead  of 
flying  from  him  in  horror ;  that  a  state  of  society  should 
exist  in  which  such  a  thing  was  possible  as  a  marriage 
between  a  Gwendolen  Harleth  and  a  Grandcourt :  this 
was  enough  to  irritate  even  the  thickest  skinned  Philis- 
tine, and  this  George  Eliot's  book  showed  with  a  terrible 
conclusiveness.  Yet  the  showing  was  made  so  daintily 
and  with  so  light  a  hand  that,  as  I  have  said,  current 
society  did  not  know,  and  has  not  yet  recognized, 
where  or  how  the  wound  was.  We  have  all  read  of 
the  miraculous  sword  in  the  German  fable  whose  blade 
was  so  keen  that  when,  upon  a  certain  occasion,  its 
owner  smote  a  warrior  with  it  from  crown  to  crotch, 
the  warrior  nevertheless  rode  home  and  was  scarcely 
aware  he  had  been  wounded  until,  upon  his  wife  opening 
the  door,  he  attempted  to  embrace  her  and  fell  into  two 
pieces.  Now,  as  I  said,  just  as  Daniel  Deronda  made 
people  feel  uncomfortable  by  even  vaguely  revealing  a 
sharp  truth  —  so,  a  prig,  so  far  as  I  can  make  out,  is  a 
person  whose  goodness  is  so  genuine,  essential  and  ever- 
present  that  all  ungenuine  people  have  a  certain  sense  of 
discomfort  when  brought  in  contact  with  it.     If  the  prig- 


The  Development  of  Personality      277 

hater  be  questioned  he  will  not  deny  the  real  goodness  of 
the  Daniel  Deronda  people ;  he  dare  not  —  no  one  in 
this  age  dares  —  to  wish  explicitly  that  Mirah  and  Daniel 
Deronda  might  be  less  good ;  but  as  nearly  as  anything 
definite  can  be  obtained  what  he  desires  is  that  the  prig 
should  be  good  in  some  oily  and  lubricative  way  so  as 
not  to  jar  the  nerves  of  those  who  are  less  good.  Con- 
form, conform  !  seems  to  be  the  essential  cry  of  the  prig- 
haters;  if  you  go  to  an  evening  party  you  wear  your 
dress  coat  and  look  like  every  other  man ;  but  here  your 
goodness  amounts  to  a  hump,  a  deformity :  we  do  not 
ask  you  to  cut  it  off,  but  at  least  pad  it ;  if  every  one 
grows  as  big  as  you  we  shall  have  to  enlarge  all  our  draw- 
ing-rooms and  society  will  be  disorganized.  In  short, 
the  cry  against  the  prig  turns  out  to  be  nothing  more 
than  the  old  claim  for  conformity  and  the  conventional. 
For  one,  I  never  hear  these  admonitions  to  conformity 
without  recalHng  a  comical  passage  of  Tom  Hood's  in 
which  the  fellows  of  a  Zoological  society  propose  to 
remedy  the  natural  defects  of  animal  morphology,  such 
as  the  humps  of  dromedaries  and  the  overgrowth  of  hair 
upon  lions,  so  as  to  bring  all  the  grotesqueness  of  the 
animal  creation  into  more  conformity  with  conventional 
ideas  of  proportion.  The  passage  occurs  in  a  pretended 
report  from  the  keeper  of  the  animals  to  the  President  of 
the  society.  After  describing  the  condition  of  the  vari- 
ous beasts  the  keeper  proceeds  : 

Honnerd  Sur,  —  Their  is  an  aggitating  skeem  of  witch  I 
humbly  approve  very  hiley.  The  plan  is  owen  to  sum  of  the 
Femail  Fellers,  — ...  For  instances  the  Buffloo  and  Fallo 
dears  and  cetra  to  have  their  horns  Gildid  and  Sheaps  is  to 
hav  Pink  ribbings  round  there  nex.  The  Ostreaches  is  to 
have  their  plums  stuck  in  their  heds,  and  the  Pecox  tales 
will  be  always  spred  out  on  fraime  wurks  like  the  hispaliers 


278  The  English  Novel 

AH  the  Bares  is  to  be  tort  to  Dance  to  Wippert's  Quadrils 
and  the  Lions  manes  is  to  be  subjective  to  pappers  and  the 
curling  tongues.  The  gould  and  silver  Fesants  is  to  be 
Polisht  every  day  with  Plait  Powder  and  the  Cammils  and 
Drumdearis  and  other  defourmed  anymills  is  to  be  paddid  to 
hide  their  Crukidnes.  Mr.  Howard  is  to  file  down  the  tusks  of 
the  wild  Bores,  and  the  Spoons  of  the  Spoonbills  is  to  be  maid 
as  like  the  King's  Patten  as  posible.  The  elifunt  will  be 
himbelisht  with  a  Sugger  candid  Castle  maid  by  Gunter  and 
the  Flaminggoes  will  be  touched  up  with  Frentch  ruge.  The 
Sloath  is  propos'd  to  have  an  ellegunt  Stait  Bed  —  and  the 
Bever  is  to  ware  one  of  Perren's  lite  Warter  Proof  Hats  — 
and  the  Balld  Vulters  baldnes  will  be  hided  by  a  small  Whig 
from  Trewfits.  The  Grains  will  be  put  into  trousirs  and  the 
Hippotamus  tite  laced  for  a  waste.  Experience  will  dictait 
menny  more  imbellishing  modes,  with  witch  I  conclud  that 
I  am 

Your  Honners, 

Very  obleeged  and  humbel  former  servant, 

Stephen  Humphreys. 

Such  is  the  ideal  to  which  the  prig  is  asked  to  con- 
form, but  after  the  first  six  lectures  of  this  course  we  are 
specially  in  position  to  see  in  all  this  cry  nothing  but  the 
old  clamor  against  personality.  Upon  us  who  have  traced 
the  growth  of  personality  from  ^schylus  to  George  Eliot, 
and  who  have  found  that  growth  to  be  the  one  direction 
for  the  advance  of  our  species,  this  cry  comes  with  little 
impressiveness. 


The  Development  of  Personality      279 


XII 

In  the  last  lecture  we  obtained  a  view  of  George  Eliot's 
Daniel  Deronda  as  containing  two  distinct  stories,  one 
of  which  might  have  been  called  The  Repentance  of 
Gwendolen  Harlethy  and  the  other,  The  Mission  of  Daniel 
Deronda ;  and  we  generalized  the  principal  objections 
against  the  work  into  two  :  namely,  that  the  main  char- 
acters were  prigs  and  that  the  artistic  value  of  the  book 
was  spoiled  by  its  moral  purpose.  In  discussing  the 
first  of  these  objections  we  found  that  probably  both  of 
them  might  be  referred  to  a  common  origin ;  for  exami- 
nation' of  precisely  what  is  meant  by  a  prig  revealed  that 
he  is  a  person  whose  goodness  is  so  downright,  so  uncon- 
forming and  so  radical  that  it  makes  the  mass  of  us 
uncomfortable.  Now  there  can  be  no  question  that  so 
far  as  the  charge  of  being  overloaded  with  moral  purpose 
is  brought  against  Daniel  Deronda,  as  distinguished  from 
George  Eliot's  other  works,  it  is  so  palpably  contrary  to 
all  facts  in  the  case  that  we  may  clearly  refer  it  to  some 
fact  outside  the  case :  and  I  readily  find  this  outside 
fact  in  that  peculiar  home-thrust  of  the  moral  of  Daniel 
Deronda  which  has  rendered  it  more  tangible  than  that 
of  any  preceding  work  which  concerned  time  past.  You 
will  remember  we  found  that  it  was  only  in  Daniel 
Deronda,  written  in  1876,  after  thirty  years  of  study  and 
of  production,  that  George  Eliot  allowed  herself  to  treat 
current  English  society ;  you  will  remember  too  how  we 
found  that  this   first  treatment   revealed   among   other 


28o  The  English  Novel 

things  a  picture  of  an  unspeakable  brute,  Grandcourt, 
throned  like  the  Indian  Lama  above  the  multitude,  and 
receiving  with  a  blas^  stare  the  special  adoration  of  the 
most  refined  young  English  girls  :  a  picture  which  made 
the  worship  of  the  golden  calf  or  the  savage  dance  around 
a  merely  impotent  wooden  idol,  fade  into  tame  blasphemy. 
No  man  could  deny  the  truth  of  the  picture ;  the  galled 
jade  was  obliged  to  wince ;  this  time  it  was  my  withers 
that  were  wnmg.  Thus  the  moral  purpose  of  Daniel 
Deronday  which  is  certainly  beyond  all  comparison  less 
obtrusive  than  that  of  any  other  book  written  by  George 
Eliot,  grew,  by  its  very  nearness,  out  of  all  perspective. 
Though  a  mere  gnat,  it  sat  on  the  very  eyelash  of  society 
and  seemed  a  monster. 

In  speaking  of  George  Eliot's  earlier  stories  I  was  at 
pains  to  show  how  explicitly  she  avowed  their  moral 
purpose ;  in  Amos  Barton^  in  Janet  'i*  Repentance ^  in 
Adam  Bede,  everywhere  there  is  the  fullest  avowal  of 
didacticism;  on  almost  every  other  page  one  meets 
those  direct  appeals  from  the  author  in  her  own  person 
to  the  reader  in  which  George  Eliot  indulged  more  freely 
than  any  novelist  I  know,  enforcing  this  or  that  moral 
view  in  plain  terms  of  preaching.  But  it  curiously  hap- 
pens that  even  these  moral  "  asides  "  are  conspicuously 
absent  in  Daniel  Deronda  ;  the  most  cursory  comparison 
of  it  in  ,this  particular  with  Adam  Bede,  for  example, 
reveals  an  enormous  disproportion  in  favor  of  Deronda 
as  to  the  weight  of  this  criticism.  Yet  people  who  had 
enthusiastically  accepted  and  extolled  Adam  Bede^  with 
all  its  explicitly  moralizing  passages  and  its  professedly 
preaching  characters,  suddenly  found  that  Daniel  Deronda 
was  intolerably  priggish  and  didactic.  But  resting  thus 
on  the  facts  in  the  case  —  easily  provable  by  comparing 
Daniel  Deronda  with  any  previous  work  —  to  show  how 


The  Development  of  Personality      281 

this  censure  of  didacticism  loses  all  momentum  as  against 
this  particular  book  :  let  us  advance  to  the  more  interest- 
ing, because  more  general,  fact  that  many  people  — 
some  in  great  sincerity  —  have  preferred  this  censure 
against  all  of  George  Eliot's  work  and  against  all  didactic 
novels  in  general.  The  objection  involves  many  shades 
of  opinion,  and  is  urged  with  the  most  diverse  motives 
and  manner.  At  one  extreme  we  have  the  Saturday 
Review  huskily  growling  —  as  in  the  extract  quoted  in  my 
last  lecture  —  that  the  office  of  the  novelist  is  to  amuse, 
never  to  instruct,  that  George  Eliot,  in  seeking  the  latter 
has  even  forfeited  the  former,  and  that  Daniel  Deronda 
neither  amuses  nor  instructs ;  whereupon  George  Eliot  is 
derisively  bid,  in  substance,  to  put  on  the  cap  and  bells 
again  and  leave  teaching  to  her  betters ;  with  a  voice,  by 
the  way,  wondrously  like  that  with  which  the  Edinburgh 
Review  some  years  ago  cried  out  to  our  adorable  John 
Keats,  "  Back  to  your  gallipots,  young  man  !  "  From 
this  extreme  we  have  all  shades  of  opinion  to  that  vague 
and  moderate  apprehension  much  current  among  young 
persons  influenced  by  a  certain  smart  sound  in  the  modern 
French  phrase  VArt  pour  PArt  —  or  by  the  German 
nickname  of  "  tendency-books  "  —  that  a  moral  intention 
on  the  part  of  an  artist  is  apt  to  interfere  with  the  nat- 
uralness or  intrinsic  beauty  of  his  work,  that  in  art  the 
controlling  consideration  must  always  be  artistic  beauty, 
and  that  artistic  beauty  is  not  only  distinct  from  but 
often  opposed  to  moral  beauty.  Now,  to  discuss  this 
question  a  priori :  to  go  forward  and  establish  an  aesthetic 
basis  for  beauty,  involving  an  examination  which  must 
range  from  Aristotle  to  Kant  and  Burke  and  Mr.  Grant 
Allen's  physiological  theories,  would  require  another 
course  of  lectures  quite  as  long  as  that  which  is  now  end- 
ing ;  so  that  all  I  can  hope  to  do  is  but  to  throw,  if  I  can, 


282  The  English  Novel 

some  light  upon  this  question.  And  so,  to  proceed  imme- 
diately to  that  work  with  some  system :  permit  me  to 
recall  to  you  in  the  first  place  that  the  requirement  has 
been  from  time  immemorial  that  wherever  there  is 
contest  as  between  artistic  and  moral  beauty,  unless  the 
moral  side  prevail,  all  is  lost.  Let  any  sculptor  hew  us 
out  the  most  ravishing  combination  of  tender  curves  and 
spheric  softness  that  ever  stood  for  woman;  yet  if  the 
lip  have  a  certain  fullness  that  hints  of  the  flesh,  if  the 
brow  be  insincere,  if  in  the  minutest  particular  the  phys- 
ical beauty  suggest  a  moral  ugliness,  that  sculptor  — 
unless  he  be  portraying  a  moral  ugliness  for  a  moral  pur- 
pose —  may  as  well  give  over  his  marble  for  paving-stones. 
Time,  whose  judgments  are  inexorably  moral,  will  not 
accept  his  work.  For  indeed  we  may  say  that  he  who 
has  not  yet  perceived  how  artistic  beauty  and  moral 
beauty  are  convergent  lines  which  run  back  into  a  common 
ideal  origin,  and  who  therefore  is  not  afire  with  moral 
beauty  just  as  with  artistic  beauty,  —  that  he,  in  short, 
who  has  not  come  to  that  stage  of  quiet  and  eternal 
frenzy  in  which  the  beauty  of  holiness  and  the  holiness  of 
beauty  mean  one  thing,  burn  as  one  fire,  shine  as  one  light, 
within  him  ;  —  he  is  not  yet  the  great  artist.  Here  it  is 
most  instructive  to  note  how  the  fine  and  beautiful  souls 
of  time  appear  after  awhile  to  lose  all  sense  of  distinction 
between  these  terms.  Beauty,  Truth,  Love,  Wisdom, 
Goodness,  and  the  like.  Hear  some  testimony  upon  this 
point :  this  is  a  case  for  witnesses.  Let  us  call,  first, 
Keats.  Keats  does  not  hesitate  to  draw  a  moral  even 
from  his  Grecian  Urn,  and  even  in  the  very  climacteric 
of  his  most  "high  sorrowful"  song;  and  that  moral 
effaces  the  distinction  between  truth  and  beauty.  "  Cold 
pastoral ! "  he  cries,  at  the  end  of  the  Ode  on  a  Grecian 
Urn, 


The  Development  of  Personality      283 

"  When  old  age  shall  this  generation  waste, 
Thou  shalt  remain  in  midst  of  other  woe 
Than  ours,  a  friend  to  man  to  whom  thou  say'st 
'  Beauty  is  truth,  truth,  beauty,'  —  that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth,  and  all  ye  need  to  know." 

Again,  bearing  in  mind  this  identity  of  truth  and 
beauty  in  Keats's  view,  observe  how  Emerson,  by  strange 
turns  of  thought,  subtly  refers  both  truth  and  beauty  to 
a  common  principle  of  the  essential  relation  of  each  thing 
to  all  things  in  the  universe.  Here  are  the  beginning 
and  end  of  Emerson's  poem  called  Each  and  All : 

"  Little  thinks  in  the  field  yon  red-cloaked  clown 
Of  thee  from  the  hill-top  looking  down ; 
The  sexton  tolling  his  bell  at  noon 
Deems  not  that  great  Napoleon 
Stops  his  horse  and  lists  with  delight 
While  his  files  sweep  round  yon  Alpine  height  j 
Nor  knowest  thou  what  argument 
Thy  life  to  thy  neighbor's  creed  has  lent. 
All  are  needed  by  each  one ; 
Nothing  is  fair  or  good  alone." 

Nothing  is  fair  or  good  alone  :  that  is  to  say  fairness, 
or  beauty,  and  goodness  depend  upon  relations  between 
creatures ;  and  so  in  the  end  of  the  poem,  after  telling 
us  how  he  learned  this  lesson  by  finding  that  the  bird- 
song  was  not  beautiful  when  away  from  its  proper  rela- 
tion to  the  sky  and  the  river  and  so  on,  we  have  this : 

"  Then  I  said  '  I  covet  truth  ; 
Beauty  is  unripe  childhood's  cheat ; 
I  leave  it  behind  with  the  games  of  youth.' 
As  I  spoke,  beneath  my  feet 
The  ground-pine  curled  its  pretty  wr6ath. 
Running  over  the  club-moss  burs  ; 
I  inhaled  the  violet's  breath  ; 
Around  me  stood  the  oaks  and  firs ; 


284  The  English  Novel 

Pine  cones  and  acorns  lay  on  the  ground ; 

Over  me  soared  the  eternal  sky, 

Full  of  light  and  of  deity ; 

Again  I  saw,  again  I  heard 

The  rolling  river,  the  morning  bird ; 

Beauty  through  all  my  senses  stole, 

I  yielded  myself  to  the  perfect  whole." 

But  again,  here  Mrs.  Browning,  speaking  by  the  mouth 
of  Adam  in  The  Drama  of  Exile ,  so  far  identifies  beauty 
and  love  as  to  make  the  former  depend  on  the  latter  ; 
insomuch  that  Satan,  created  the  most  beautiful  of  all 
angels,  becomes  the  most  repulsive  of  all  angels  from 
lack  of  love,  though  retaining  all  his  original  outfit  of 
beauty.  In  The  Drama  of  Exile ^  after  Adam  and  Eve 
have  become  wise  with  the  great  lessons  of  grief,  love 
and  forgiveness,  to  them  comes  Satan,  with  such  talk  as 
if  he  would  mock  them  back  into  their  misery ;  but  it  is 
fine  to  see  how  the  father  of  men  now  instructs  the  prince 
of  the  angels  upon  this  matter  of  love  and  beauty. 

Eve.  —  Speak  no  more  with  him, 

Beloved !  it  is  not  good  to  speak  with  him. 

Go  from  us,  Lucifer,  and  speak  no  more ! 

We  have  no  pardon  which  thou  dost  not  scom» 

Nor  any  bliss,  thou  seest,  for  coveting, 

Nor  innocence  for  staining.     Being  bereft, 

We  would  be  alone.    Go. 
Luc.  —  Ah !  ye  talk  the  same. 

All  of  you  —  spirits  and  clay  —  go,  and  depart ! 

In  Heaven  they  said  so  ;  and  at  Eden's  gate,  — 

And  here,  reiterant,  in  the  wilderness. 

None  saith.  Stay  with  me,  for  thy  face  is  fair  \ 

None  saith,  Stay  with  me,  for  thy  voice  is  sweet ! 

And  yet  I  was  not  fashioned  out  of  clay. 

Look  on  me,  woman !    Am  I  beautiful  ? 
Eve.  —  Thou  hast  a  glorious  darkness. 
Luc.  —  Nothing  more  ? 

Eve.  —  I  think,  no  more. 


The  Development  of  Personality      285 

Luc.  —  False  Heart  —  thou  thinkest  more  1 

Thou  canst  not  choose  but  think,  .  .  .  that  I  stand 
Most  absolute  in  beauty.     As  yourselves 
"Were  fashioned  very  good  at  best,  so  we 
Sprang  very  beauteous  from  the  creant  Word 
Which  thrilled  behind  us,  God  Himself  being  moved 
When  that  august  work  of  a  perfect  shape,  — 
His  dignities  of  sovran  angel-hood,  — 
Swept  out  into  the  universe,  —  divine 
With  thunderous  movements,  earnest  looks  of  gods. 
And  silver-solemn  clash  of  cymbal- wings ! 
Whereof  was  I,  in  motion  and  in  form, 
A  part  not  poorest.     And  yet,  —  yet,  perhaps, 
This  beauty  which  I  speak  of  is  not  here, 
As  God's  voice  is  not  here,  nor  even  my  crown  — 
I  do  not  know.     What  is  this  thought  or  thing 
Which  I  call  beauty  ?  is  it  thought  or  thing  ? 
Is  it  a  thought  accepted  for  a  thing  ? 
Or  both  ?  or  neither  ?  —  a  pretext  —  a  word  ? 
Its  meaning  flutters  in  me  like  a  flame 
Under  my  own  breath  :  my  perceptions  reel 
For  evermore  around  it,  and  fall  off, 
As  if  it,  too,  were  holy. 

Eve.  —  Which  it  is. 

Adam.  —  The  essence  of  all  beauty,  I  call  love. 
The  attribute,  the  evidence,  the  end. 
The  consummation  to  the  inward  sense 
Of  beauty  apprehended  from  without, 
I  still  call  love.    As  form  when  colorless 
Is  nothing  to  the  eye,  —  that  pine-tree  there, 
Without  its  black  and  green,  being  all  a  blank,  — 
So,  without  love,  is  beauty  undiscerned. 
In  man  or  angel.     Angel !  rather  ask 
What  love  is  in  thee,  what  love  moves  to  thee, 
And  what  collateral  love  moves  on  with  thee ; 
Then  shalt  thou  know  if  thou  art  beautiful. 

Luc.  —  Love  !  what  is  love  ?    I  lose  it.    Beauty  and  love 

I  darken  to  the  image.    Beauty  —  love !     {He  disappears^ 

Let  us  now  carry  forward   this   connection   between 
love  and  beauty  in  listening  to  a  further  testimony  of 


286  The  English  Novel 

Emerson's  in  a  poem  called  The  Celestial  Love,  where, 
instead  of  identifying  beauty  and  truth  with  Keats,  we 
find  him  making  love  and  truth  to  be  one ; 

**  Love's  hearts  are  faithful,  but  not  fond, 
Bound  for  the  just  but  not  beyond ; 
Not  glad,  as  the  low-loving  herd, 
Of  self  in  other  still  preferred. 
But  they  have  heartily  designed 
The  benefit  of  broad  mankind. 
And  they  serve  men  austerely, 
After  their  own  genius,  clearly. 
Without  a  false  humility ; 
For  this  is  love's  nobility,  — 
Not  to  scatter  bread  and  gold. 
Goods  and  raiment  bought  and  sold ; 
But  to  hold  fast  his  simple  sense, 
And  speak  the  speech  of  innocence. 
And  with  hand,  and  body,  and  blood, 
To  make  his  bosom-counsel  good. 
For  he  that  feeds  men  serveth  few ; 
He  serves  all  that  dares  be  true." 

And  in  connection  with  these  lines  : 

"  Not  glad,  as  the  low-loving  herd. 
Of  self  in  other  still  preferred,"  — 

I  must  here  beg  you  to  observe  the  quite  incalculable 
advance  in  the  ideal  of  love  here  presented  by  Emerson 
and  the  ideal  which  was  thought  to  be  the  crown  and 
boast  of  the  classic  novel  a  hundred  years  ago,  and 
which  is  still  pointed  to  with  exultation  by  thoughtless 
people.  This  ideal,  by  universal  voice,  was  held  to  have 
been  consummated  by  Fielding  in  his  character  of  Squire 
Allworthy,  in  the  famous  novel,  Tom  Jones.  And  here  it 
is :  we  have  a  dramatic  presentation  of  Squire  Allworthy, 
early  on  a  May  morning  pacing  the  terrace  before 
his  mansion  which  commanded  a  noble  stretch  of  coun- 


The  Development  of  Personality      287 

try,  and  then  Fielding  glows  thus :  "  In  the  full  blaze 
of  his  majesty  up  rose  the  sun,  than  which  one  object 
alone  in  this  lower  creation  could  be  more  glorious,  and 
that  Mr.  AUworthy  himself  presented  —  a  human  being 
replete  with  benevolence,  meditating  in  what  manner  he 
might  render  himself  most  acceptable  to  his  Creator  by 
doing  most  good  to  his  creatures."  Here  Mr.  AUworthy 's 
benevolence  has  for  its  object  to  render  himself  most 
acceptable  to  his  Creator ;  his  love,  in  other  words,  is 
only  another  term  for  increasing  his  account  in  the  Bank 
of  Heaven ;  a  perfect  example,  in  short,  of  that  love  of 
the  low-loving  herd  which  is  self  in  other  still  preferred. 

But  now  let  me  once  more  turn  the  tube  and  gain 
another  radiant  arrangement  of  these  kaleidoscopic 
elements,  beauty  and  love  and  the  like.  In  Emerson's 
poem  called  Beauty  (which  must  be  distinguished  from 
the  Ode  to  Beauty)  the  relation  between  love  and  beauty 
takes  this  turn:  "Seyd,"  he  says,  "chased  beauty 

everywhere, 
In  flame,  in  storm,  in  clouds  of  air. 
He  smote  the  lake  to  feed  his  eye 
With  the  beryl  beam  of  the  broken  wave ; 
He  flung  in  pebbles  well  to  hear 
The  moment's  music  which  they  gave. 
Oft  pealed  for  him  a  lofty  tone 
From  nodding  pole  and  belting  zone. 

"  He  heard  a  voice  none  else  could  hear 
From  centred  and  from  errant  sphere. 
The  quaking  earth  did  quake  in  rhyme, 
Seas  ebbed  and  flowed  in  epic  chime. 
In  dens  of  passion,  pits  of  woe, 
He  saw  strong  Eros  struggling  through, 
To  sum  the  doubt  and  solve  the  curse 
And  beam  to  the  bounds  of  the  universe. 
While  thus  to  love  he  gave  his  days 
In  loyal  worship,  scorning  praise," 


288  The  English  Novel 

(where,  you  obsen'e,  love  is  substituted  for  beauty,  as 
that  to  which  he  gave  his  days,  in  the  most  naive  assump- 
tion that  the  one  involves  the  other,) 

*'  While  thus  to  love  he  gave  his  days 
In  loyal  worship,  scorning  praise, 
How  spread  their  lures  for  him  in  vain 
Thieving  ambition  and  paltering  gain ! 
He  thought  it  happier  to  be  dead, 
To  die  for  Beauty,  —  than  live  for  bread." 

George  Eliot  has  somewhere  called  this  word  love 
a  word- of- all- work.  If  with  another  turn  I  add  to  these 
testimonies  one  from  Swedenborg,  in  which  this  same 
love  —  which  we  have  just  seen  to  be  beauty  —  which 
beauty  we  just  before  saw  to  be  truth —  is  now  identified 
with  wisdom  :  we  prove  the  justice  of  George  Eliot's 
phrase.  In  Section  X  of  his  work  on  the  Divine  Provi- 
dence Swedenborg  says  :  "  The  good  of  love  is  not  good 
any  further  than  it  is  united  to  the  truth  of  wisdom  \  and 
the  truth  of  wisdom  is  not  truth  any  further  than  it  is 
united  to  the  good  of  love  ;  "  and  he  continues  in  Section 
XIII :  "  Now  because  truth  is  from  good,  as  wisdom  is 
from  love,  therefore  both  taken  together  are  called  love 
or  good ;  for  love  in  its  form  is  wisdom,  and  good  in  its 
form  is  truth." 

And  finally  does  not  David  practically  confirm  this 
view  where,  in  Psalm  CXIX,  he  involves  the  love  of  the 
law  of  God  with  wisdom  in  the  verse  :  "  I  understand 
more  than  the  ancients  because  I  keep  thy  precepts  "  ? 

I  grieve  that  there  is  no  time  to  call  more  witnesses ; 
for  I  love  to  assemble  these  lofty  spirits  and  hear  them 
speak  upon  one  topic.  Is  it  not  clear  that  in  the  minds 
of  these  serious  thinkers  truth,  beauty,  wisdom,  good- 
ness, love,  appear  as  if  they  were  but  avatars  of  one  and 
the  same  essential  God? 


The  Development  of  Personality      289 

And  if  this  be  true  cannot  one  say  with  authority  to 
the  young  artist,  —  whether  working  in  stone,  in  color, 
in  tones  or  in  character-forms  of  the  novel :  so  far  from 
dreading  that  your  moral  purpose  will  interfere  with 
your  beautiful  creation,  go  forward  in  the  clear  conviction 
that  unless  you  are  suffused  —  soul  and  body,  one  might 
say  —  with  that  moral  purpose  which  finds  its  largest 
expression  in  love  —  that  is,  the  love  of  all  things  in 
their  proper  relation  —  unless  you  are  suffused  with  this 
love,  do  not  dare  to  meddle  with  beauty,  unless  you  are 
suffused  with  beauty,  do  not  dare  to  meddle  with  love, 
unless  you  are  suffused  with  truth,  do  not  dare  to  med- 
dle with  goodness,  —  in  a  word,  unless  you  are  suffused 
with  beauty,  truth,  wisdom,  goodness  and  love,  abandon 
the  hope  that  the  ages  will  accept  you  as  an  artist. 

Of  course  I  leave  out  of  view  here  all  that  field  of 
artistic  activity  which  is  merely  neutral,  which  is  —  not 
immoral  but  —  merely  wwmoral.  The  situations  in  Scott's 
novels  for  instance  do  not  in  general  put  us  upon  any 
moral  question  as  between  man  and  man.  Or  when  our 
own  Mr.  Way  paints  his  luminous  bunches  of  grapes, 
one  of  which  will  feed  the  palates  of  a  thousand  souls 
though  it  is  never  eaten,  and  thus  shows  us  how  Art 
repeats  the  miracle  of  the  loaves  and  fishes,  feeding  the 
multitude  and  leaving  more  of  the  original  provision  than 
was  at  first,  —  we  have  most  delightful  unmoral  art.  This 
is  not  only  legitimate,  but  I  think  among  the  most  benefi-^ 
cent  energies  of  art :  it  rests  our  hearts,  it  gives  us  holi- 
day from  the  Eternal  Debate,  it  re-creates  us  for  all  work. 

But  now  secondly,  as  to  the  influence  of  moral  pur- 
pose in  art :  we  have  been  in  the  habit,  as  you  will  re- 
member, of  passing  at  the  earliest  possible  moment  from 
abstract  discussion  to  the  concrete  instance ;  and  if  we 
now  follow  that  course  and  inquire,  —  not  whether  moral 

19 


290  The  English  Novel 

purpose  may  interfere  with  artistic  creation,  —  but  whether 
moral  purpose  has  interfered  with  artistic  creation,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  in  the  works  of  those  whom  the  ages  have 
set  in  the  highest  heaven  of  art,  we  get  a  verdict  which 
seems  to  leave  little  room  for  question.  At  the  begin- 
ning we  are  met  with  the  fact  that  the  greatest  work  has 
always  gone  hand  in  hand  with  the  most  fervent  moral 
purpose.  For  example,  the  most  poetical  poetry  of 
which  we  know  anything  is  that  of  the  author  of  Job^ 
and  of  David  and  his  fellow  psalm-writers.  I  have  used 
the  expression  "  most  poetical "  here  with  design ;  for 
regarded  as  pure  literature  these  poems  in  this  particular 
of  poeticalness,  of  pure  spirituality,  lift  themselves  into  a 
plane  not  reached  by  any  others.  A  single  fact  in  proof 
of  this  exceeding  poeticalness  will  suffice :  it  is  the  fact 
that  these  poems  alone,  of  all  ever  written,  bear  translation 
from  one  language  into  another  without  hurt.  Surely 
this  can  be  said  of  no  other  poetic  work.  If  we  strike 
away  all  allowances  of  amateurishness  and  good  fellow- 
ship, and  judge  with  the  uncompromising  truth  of  the 
pious  artist :  how  pitiful  is  Homer  as  he  appears  in  even 
Pope's  English ;  or  how  subtly  does  the  simplicity  of 
Dante  sink  into  childishness  even  with  Mr.  Longfellow 
guiding ;  or  how  tedious  and  flat  fall  the  cultured  sen- 
tences of  Goethe  even  in  Taylor's  version,  which  has  by 
many  been  declared  the  most  successful  translation  ever 
made,  not  only  of  Faust  but  of  any  foreign  poem ;  nay, 
how  completely  the  charm  of  Chaucer  exhales  away 
even  when  redacted  merely  from  an  older  dialect  into  a 
later  one,  by  hands  so  skillful  as  those  of  Dryden  and 
Wordsworth  ! 

Now,  it  is  words  and  their  associations  which  are 
untranslatable,  not  ideas ;  there  is  no  idea,  whether 
originating  in  a  Hebrew,  Greek  or  other  mind,  which 


The  Development  of  Personality      291 

cannot  be  adequately  produced  as  idea  in  English  words ; 
the  reason  why  Shakspere  and  Dante  are  practically 
untranslatable  is  that,  recognizing  how  every  word  means 
more  than  itself  to  its  native  users,  —  how  every  word  is 
like  the  bright  head  of  a  comet  drawing  behind  it  a  less 
luminous  train  of  vague  associations  which  are  associa- 
tions only  to  those  who  have  used  such  words  from 
infancy,  —  Shakspere  and  Dante,  I  say,  have  used  this 
fact  and  have  constructed  poems  which  necessarily  mean 
more  to  native  hearers  than  they  can  possibly  mean  to 
any  foreign  ear. 

But  this  Hebrew  poetry  which  I  have  mentioned  is  so 
purely  composed  of  ideas  which  are  universal,  essential, 
fundamental  to  the  personality  of  man,  instantly  recog- 
nizable by  every  soul  of  every  race,  —  that  they  remain 
absolutely  great,  absolutely  artistic,  in  whatever  language 
they  are  couched. 

For  example  :  if  one  climbs  up  for  a  moment  out  of 
that  vagueness  with  which  Biblical  expressions,  for 
various  reasons,  are  apt  to  fall  upon  many  ears,  so  that 
one  may  consider  the  clean  and  virgin  quality  of  ideas 
clarified  from  all  factitious  charm  of  word  and  of  as- 
sociation, —  what  could  be  more  nearly  perfect  as  pure 
literature  than  this : 

**  The  entrance  of  Thy  words  giveth  light ; 
it  giveth  understanding  unto  the  simple. 

"  I  opened  my  mouth  and  panted : 
for  I  longed  for  Thy  commandments. 

"  Deliver  me  from  the  oppression  of  man : 
so  will  I  keep  Thy  precepts. 

"  Order  my  steps  in  Thy  word, 
and  let  not  any  iniquity  have  dominion  over  me 

"  Make  Thy  face  to  shine  upon  Thy  servant; 
and  teach  me  Thy  statutes. 

"  Rivers  of  waters  run  down  my  eyes, 
because  they  keep  not  Thy  law." 


292  The  English  Novel 

Or  this : 

"  I  will  lift  up  mine  eyes  to  the  hills, 
whence  cometh  my  help. 

"  My  help  cometh  from  the  Lord, 
which  made  heaven  and  earth. 

"  The  Lord  is  thy  keeper :  the  Lord  is  thy  shade 
upon  thy  right  hand. 

"  The  sun  shall  not  smite  thee  by  day, 
nor  the  moon  by  night. 

"  The  Lord  shall  preserve  thee  from  all  evil : 
He  shall  preserve  thy  soul. 

"  The  Lord  shall  preserve  thy  going  out 
and  thy  coming  in  from  this  time  forth, 
and  even  for  evermore." 

Or  this,  of  Isaiah's  : 

"  Then  the  eyes  of  the  blind  shall  be  opened  and  the  ears 
of  the  deaf  unstopped. 

"  Then  the  lame  shall  leap  as  an  hart,  and  the  tongue  of 
the  dumb  s/taUsing  :  for  in  the  wilderness  shall  waters  break 
out,  and  streams  in  the  desert.  And  the  parched  ground 
shall  become  a  pool,  and  the  thirsty  land  springs  of  water. 

"  In  the  habitations  of  dragons  where  each  lay  shall  be 
grass  with  reeds  and  rushes.  .  .  .  No  lion  shall  be  there,  nor 
any  ravenous  beast  shall  go  up  thereon,  it  shall  not  be  found 
there;  but  the  redeemed  shall  walk  there  ; 

"  And  the  ransomed  of  the  Lord  shall  return  and  come  to 
Zion  with  songs  of  everlasting  joy  upon  their  heads:  they 
shall  obtain  joy  and  gladness,  and  sorrow  and  sighing  shall 
flee  away." 

Or  this,  from  the  author  oijob: 

"  Surely  there  is  a  vein  for  the  silver  and  a  place  for  gold 
where  they  fine  it.  .  . 

*'  As  for  the  earth,  out  of  it  cometh  bread :  and  under  it  is 
turned  up  as  it  were  fire.  .  .  . 

"  But  where  shall  wisdom  be  found .'' 

"  And  where  is  the  place  of  understanding  ? 


The  Development  of  Personality      293 

"...  The  depth  saith,  it  is  not  in  me :  and  the  sea  saith, 
it  is  not  with  me. 

"...  Destruction  and  death  say,  we  have  heard  the  fame 
thereof  with  our  ears ;  God  understandeth  the  way  thereof 
and  he  knoweth  the  place  thereof.  For  he  looketh  to  the 
ends  of  the  earth,  and  seeth  under  the  whole  heaven ; 

"...  When  He  made  a  decree  for  the  rain  and  a  way 
for  the  lightning  of  the  thunder : 

"  Then  did  He  see  it  and  declare  it ; 
He  prepared  it,  yea,  and  searched  it  out. 
And  unto  man  He  said  :  '  Behold  the  fear  of  the  Lord,  that 
is  wisdom ;  and  to  depart  from  evil  is  understanding.'  " 

Here  it  is  apparent  enough  that  the  moral  purpose 
with  which  these  writers  were  beyond  all  question  sur- 
charged, instead  of  interfering  with  the  artistic  value  of 
their  product  has  spiritualized  the  art  of  it  into  an  inten- 
sity which  burns  away  all  limitations  of  language,  and 
sets  their  poems  as  indestructible  monuments  in  the 
hearts  of  the  whole  human  race. 

If  we  descend  to  the  next  rank  of  poetry  I  have  only 
to  ask  you  to  observe  how,  in  Shakspere,  just  as  the 
moral  purpose  becomes  loftier  the  artistic  creations  be- 
come lovelier.  Compare,  for  example,  the  forgiveness  and 
reconciliation  group  of  plays,  as  they  have  been  called, 
—  Winter's  Tale,  Henry  VIII,  and  The  Teinpest  (which 
must  have  been  written  late  in  Shakspere's  life,  when  the 
moral  beauty  of  large  forgiveness  seems  to  have  taken 
full  possession  of  his  fancy,  and  when  the  moral  purpose 
of  displaying  that  beauty  to  his  fellow-men  seemed  to 
have  reigned  over  his  creative  energy)  :  compare,  I  say, 
these  plays  with  earlier  ones,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  all 
the  main  creations  are  more  distinctly  artistic,  more  spirit- 
ually beautiful,  lifted  up  into  a  plane  of  holy  ravishment 
which  is  far  above  that  of  alt  the  earlier  plays.     Think 


294  The  English  Novel 

of  the  dignity  and  endless  womanly  patience  of  Hermione, 
of  the  heavenly  freshness  and  morning  quality  of  Per- 
dita,  of  the  captivating  roguery  of  Autolycus  in  Winter's 
TaiCy  of  the  colossal  forgiveness  of  Queen  Katherine  in 
Hemy  VIII^  of  the  equally  colossal  pardon  of  Prospero, 
of  the  dewy  innocence  of  Miranda,  of  the  gracious  and 
graceful  ministrations  of  Ariel,  of  the  grotesquerie  of 
Caliban  and  Trinculo,  of  the  play  of  ever-fresh  delights 
and  surprises  which  make  the  drama  of  The  Tempest 
itself  a  lone  and  music-haunted  island  among  dramas  ! 
Everywhere  in  these  latter  plays  I  seem  to  feel  the 
brooding  of  a  certain  sanctity  which  breathes  out  of  the 
larger  moral  purpose  of  the  period. 

Leaving  these  illustrations,  for  which  time  fails,  it  seems 
to  me  that  we  have  fairly  made  out  our  case  against 
these  objectors  if,  after  this  review  of  the  connection 
between  moral  purpose  and  artistic  creation,  we  advance 
thirdly  to  the  fact  —  of  which  these  objectors  seem  pro- 
foundly obUvious  —  that  the  English  novel  at  its  very 
beginning  announces  itself  as  the  vehicle  of  moral  pur- 
pose. You  will  remember  that  when  discussing  Richard- 
son and  Fielding,  the  first  English  novelists,  I  was  at 
pains  to  show  how  carefully  they  sheltered  their  works 
behind  the  claim  of  this  very  didacticism.  Everywhere 
in  Pamela^  Clarissa  Harlowe^  Tom  Jones y  —  in  the  pre- 
face, sometimes  in  the  very  titlepage,  —  it  is  ostenta- 
tiously set  up  that  the  object  of  the  book  is  to  improve 
men's  moral  condition  by  setting  before  them  plain 
examples  of  vice  and  virtue. 

Passing  by,  therefore,  the  grinning  absurdity  of  the 
Saturday  Review's  declaration  that  the  proper  office  of 
the  novelist  is  to  amuse,  and  that  when  George  Eliot 
pretended  to  do  more,  and  to  instruct,  she  necessarily 
failed  to  do  either,  —  it  is  almost  as  odd  to  find  that  the 


The  Development  of  Personality      295 

very  objectors  who  urge  the  injurious  effect  of  George 
Eliot's  moral  purpose  upon  her  work  are  people  who 
swear  by  Richardson  and  Fielding,  utterly  forgetting  that 
if  moral  purpose  is  a  detriment  to  Daniel  Deronda,  it  is 
simply  destruction  to  Clarissa  Harlowe  and  Tom  Jones. 

And  lastly  upon  this  point,  when  I  think  of  the  crude 
and  hasty  criticism  which  confines  this  moral  purpose  in 
Daniel  Deronda  to  the  pushing  forward  of  Deronda's 
so-called  religious  patriotism  in  endeavoring  to  re-estab- 
lish his  people  in  the  ancient  seat  of  the  Hebrews,  —  a 
view  which  I  call  crude  and  hasty  because  it  completely 
loses  sight  of  the  much  more  prominent  and  important 
moral  purpose  of  the  book,  namely,  the  setting  forth  of 
Gwendolen  Harleth's  repentance  ;  when,  I  say,  I  hear 
these  critics  not  only  assume  that  Deronda's  mission 
is  the  moral  purpose  of  this  book,  but  even  beUttle  that 
by  declaring  that  George  Eliot's  enthusiasm  for  the  reha- 
bilitation of  the  Jews  must  have  been  due  to  a  chance 
personal  acquaintance  of  hers  with  some  fervid  Jew 
who  led  her  off  into  these  chimerical  fancies ;  and  when 
I  find  this  tone  prevailing  not  only  with  the  Phil- 
istines but  among  a  great  part  of  George  Eliot's 
otherwise  friends  and  lovers :  then  I  am  in  a  state 
of  amazement  which  precludes  anything  like  critical 
judgment  on  my  part.  As  for  me,  no  Jew  —  not 
even  the  poorest  shambling  clothes-dealer  in  Harrison 
street  —  but  startles  me  effectually  out  of  this  work-a-day 
world  :  when  I  look  upon  the  face  of  a  Jew,  I  seem  to 
feel  a  little  wind  fresh  from  off  the  sea  of  Tiberias,  I 
seem  to  receive  a  message  which  has  come  under  the 
whole  sea  of  time  from  the  further  shore  of  it :  this  wan- 
dering person,  who  without  a  home  in  any  nation  has 
yet  made  a  literature  which  is  at  home  in  every  nation, 
carries  me  in  one  direction  to  my  mysterious  brethren 


296  The  English  Novel 

the  cave-men  and  the  lake  dwellers,  in  the  other  direc- 
tion to  the  masterful  carpenter  of  Bethlehem,  climax  of 
our  race.  Until  you  can  bring  me  a  statesman  more 
comprehensive  in  view  and  more  diligent  in  detail  than 
Moses,  until  you  can  bring  me  poets  more  spiritual  than 
David  and  him  who  wrote  Job,  until  you  can  bring  me  a 
lover  more  pure  or  a  mystic  more  rapt  than  John,  until 
you  can  bring  me  a  man  more  dear  and  friendly  and 
helpful  and  strong  and  human  and  Christly  than  Jesus, 
—  do  not  speak  to  me  slightingly  of  the  Jew.  And  now, 
to  gather  together  these  people  from  the  four  ends  of 
the  earth,  to  rehabilitate  them  in  their  thousand- fold 
consecrated  home  after  so  many  ages  of  wandering,  to 
re-make  them  into  a  homologous  nation  at  once  the 
newest  and  the  oldest  upon  the. earth,  to  endow  the  nine- 
teenth century  with  that  prodigious  momentum  which  all 
the  old  Jewish  fervor  and  spirituality  and  tenacity  would 
acquire  in  the  backward  spring  from  such  long  ages  of 
restraint  and  oppression,  and  with  the  mighty  accumu- 
lation of  cosmopolitan  experiences ;  the  bare  suggestion 
would  seem  enough  to  stir  the  blood  of  the  most  un- 
gentle Gentile.  And  if,  anticipating  a  certain  shame  in 
their  attitude,  these  objectors  add  that  Deronda's  mis- 
sion was  chimerical,  I  reply  that  since  we  have  seen  the 
telegraph  and  the  photophone  and  the  railway  and  Ben- 
jamin Disraeli  prime  minister  of  England,  the  word 
chimerical  has  ceased  to  have  a  meaning.  Somewhere 
in  this  same  book  we  are  discussing  George  Eliot  says  : 
"There  is  a  sort  of  human  paste  that  when  it  comes 
near  the  fire  of  enthusiasm  is  only  baked  into  harder 
shape."  Such  seem  to  me  those  who  remain  sardoni- 
cally unaffected  by  the  idea  of  Jewish  restoration.  As 
for  me :  the  movement  seems  so  noble  and  captivating 
that  to  fail  in  it  appears  finer  than  to  succeed  in  most 


The  Development  of  Personality      297 

of  the  promising  projects  of  this  world ;  and  one  almost 
wishes  one  were  a  Jew,  that  one  might  begin  it  without 
loss  of  time. 

But  I  must  hasten  to  complete  the  account  of  George 
Eliot's  personal  existence  which  we  suspended  at  the 
point  where  she  had  come  to  London  in  1851. 

She  had  been  persuaded  to  this  step  by  Dr.  Chapman, 
who  was  at  that  time  editor  of  the  Westminster  Review^ 
and  who  asked  her  to  come  and  help  him  to  conduct 
that  publication.  At  this  time  she  must  have  been  one 
of  the  most  captivating  companions  imaginable.  She 
knew  French,  German  and  Italian,  and  had  besides  a 
good  knowledge  of  Latin,  Greek,  Russian  and  Hebrew. 
She  was  a  really  good  player  of  the  piano,  and  had  some 
proficiency  on  the  organ;  she  had  already  mixed  in 
some  of  the  best  society  of  the  world,  for,  in  1841,  her 
father  had  moved  to  Foleshill,  near  Coventry,  and  here 
she  quickly  became  intimate  in  the  household  of  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Charles  Bray,  where  she  met  such  people  as 
Emerson,  George  Combe,  Mr.  Froude,  and  many  other 
noted  ones  of  the  literary  circles  which  the  Brays 
delighted  in  drawing  about  them ;  her  mind  had  been 
enlarged  by  the  treasures  of  the  Continent  which  she 
visited  with  her  life-long  friends,  the  Brays,  in  1849, 
after  the  death  of  her  father,  remaining  at  Geneva  after 
the  Brays  returned  to  England ;  she  had  all  that  homely 
lore  which  comes  with  the  successful  administration  of 
breakfast,  dinner  and  supper,  for  her  sisters  and  brothers 
had  all  married,  and  she  lived  alone  with  her  father  after 
his  removal  to  Coventry  in  1841,  and  kept  his  house  for 
him  from  that  time  until  his  death,  not  only  with  great 
daughterly  devotion  but,  it  is  said,  with  great  success  as 
a  domestic  manager;  besides  thus  knowing  the  mys- 
teries of  good  coffee  and  good  bread  she  was  widely 


298  The  English  Novel 

versed  in  theology,  philosophy  and  the  movements  of 
modem  science  :  all  of  which  equipment  was  permeated 
with  a  certain  intensity  which  struck  every  one  who 
came  near  her.  With  this  endowment  she  came  to  Lon- 
don in  185 1,  as  I  have  said,  by  Dr.  Chapman's  invitation, 
and  took  up  her  residence  at  Dr.  Chapman's  house. 
Here  she  immediately  began  to  meet  George  H.  Lewes, 
Carlyle,  Mill  and  Herbert  Spencer.  Of  her  relations  to 
Lewes  it  seems  to  me  discussion  is  not  now  possible.  It 
is  known  that  Lewes's  wife  had  once  left  him,  that  he  had 
generously  condoned  the  offence  and  received  her  again, 
and  that  in  a  year  she  again  eloped ;  the  laws  of  England 
make  such  a  condonation  preclude  divorce ;  Lewes  was 
thus  prevented  from  legally  marrying  again  by  a  techni- 
cality of  the  law  which  converted  his  own  generosity  into  a 
penalty ;  under  these  circumstances  George  Eliot,  moved 
surely  by  pure  love,  took  up  her  residence  with  him, 
and  according  to  universal  account,  not  only  was  a  faith- 
ful wife  to  him  for  twenty  years  until  his  death,  but  was  a 
devoted  mother  to  his  children.  That  her  failure  to  go 
through  the  form  of  marriage  was  not  due  to  any  con- 
tempt for  that  form,  as  has  sometimes  been  absurdly 
alleged,  is  conclusively  shown  by  the  fact  that  when  she 
married  Mr.  Cross,  a  year  and  a  half  after  Lewes's  death, 
the  ceremony  was  performed  according  to  the  regular 
rites  of  the  Church  of  England. 

The  most  congenial  of  George  Eliot's  acquaintances 
during  these  early  days  at  the  Chapmans'  in  London  was 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer.  For  a  long  time  indeed  the  story 
went  the  rounds  that  Mr.  Spencer  had  been  George 
Eliot's  tutor ;  but  you  easily  observe  that  when  she  met 
him  at  this  time  in  London  she  was  already  thirty-one 
'years  old,  long  past  her  days  of  tutorship.  The  story 
however  has  authoritatively  been  denied  by  Mr.  Spencer 


The  Development  of  Personality      299 

himself.  That  George  Eliot  took  pleasure  in  his  philos- 
ophy, that  she  was  especially  conversant  with  his  Princi- 
ples of  Psychology y  and  that  they  were  mutually-admiring 
and  mutually-profitable  friends,  seems  clear  enough ;  but 
I  cannot  help  regarding  it  a  serious  mistake  to  suppose 
that  her  novels  were  largely  determined  by  Mr.  Spencer's 
theory  of  evolution,  as  I  find  asserted  by  a  recent  critic 
who  ends  an  article  with  the  declaration  that  "  the  writ- 
ings of  George  Eliot  must  be  regarded,  I  think,  as  one 
of  the  earliest  triumphs  of  the  Spencerian  method  of 
studying  personal  character  and  the  laws  of  social  life." 

This  seems  to  me  so  far  from  being  true  that  many  of 
George  Eliot's  characters  appear  like  living  objections  to 
the  theory  of  evolution.  How  could  you,  according  to 
this  theory,  evolve  the  moral  stoutness  and  sobriety  of 
Adam  Bede,  for  example,  from  his  precedent  conditions, 
to  wit,  his  drunken  father  and  querulous  mother?  How 
could  you  evolve  the  intensity  and  intellectual  alertness 
of  Maggie  TuUiver  from  her  precedent  conditions,  to  wit, 
a  flaccid  mother,  and  a  father  wooden  by  nature  and 
sodden  by  misfortune?  Though  surely  influenced  by 
circumstances  her  characters  everywhere  seem  to  flout 
evolution  in  the  face. 

But  the  most  pleasant  feature  connected  with  the  in- 
tercourse of  George  Eliot  and  Herbert  Spencer  is  that  it 
appears  to  have  been  Mr.  Spencer  who  first  influenced 
her  to  write  novels  instead  of  heavy  essays  in  The  West- 
minster. It  is  most  instructive  to  note  that  this  was 
done  with  much  difficulty.  Only  after  long  resistance, 
after  careful  thought,  and  indeed  after  actual  trial  was 
George  Eliot  persuaded  that  her  gift  lay  in  fiction  and 
not  in  philosophy;  for  it  was  pending  the  argument 
about  the  matter  that  she  quietly  wrote  Scenes  of  Cleri- 
cal Life  and  caused  them  to  be  published  with  all  the 
precaution  of  anonymousness,  by  way  of  actual  test. 


300  The  English  Novel 

As  to  her  personal  habits  I  have  gleaned  that  her  man- 
uscript was  wonderfully  beautiful  and  perfect,  a  delight  to 
the  printers,  without  blot  or  erasure,  every  letter  carefully 
formed ;  that  she  read  the  Bible  every  day  and  that  one 
of  her  favorite  books  was  Thomas  a  Kempis  on  The  Imi- 
tation of  Christ;  that  she  took  no  knowledge  at  second- 
hand ;  that  she  had  a  great  grasp  of  business ;  that  she 
worked  slowly  and  with  infinite  pains,  meditating  long 
over  her  subject  before  beginning ;  that  she  was  intensely 
sensitive  to  criticism ;  that  she  believed  herself  a  poet  in 
opposition  to  the  almost  unanimous  verdict  of  criticism 
which  had  pronounced  The  Spanish  Gypsy^  Agatha  and 
The  Legend  of  Jubal  as  failing  in  the  gift  of  song,  though 
highly  poetic ;  that  the  very  best  society  in  London  — 
that  is  to  say  in  the  world  —  was  to  be  found  at  her  Sun- 
day afternoon  receptions  at  the  Priory,  Regent's  Park, 
where  she  and  Mr.  Lewes  lived  so  long ;  and  that  she 
rarely  left  her  own  home  except  when  tempted  by  a  fine 
painting  or  some  unusually  good  performance  of  music. 

I  have  given  here  a  list  of  her  complete  works,  with 
dates  of  publication  so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  gather. 
I  believe  this  is  nearly  complete. 

Translation  of  Strauss'  Leben  JesUy  1846  ;  contributions 
to  The  Westminster  Review y  from  about  1850,  during  sev- 
eral years  ;  translation  of  Feuerbach's  Essence  of  Chris- 
tianity,  1854  ;  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life y  Blackwood's  Mag- 
azine, 1857,  —  book- form,  1858  ;  AdamBede^  1859  ;  The 
Mill  on  the  Floss y  i860;  The  Lifted  Veil,  Blackwood's 
Magazine y  i860  :  Silas  Marner,  1861  ;  Romola,  Cornhill 
Magazine y  book-form,  1863;  Felix  Holty  1866  j  The 
Spanish  Gypsy y  1868  ;  Address  to  Worhneny  Blackwood s 
Magazine,  1868  ;  Agatha,  1869  ;  How  Lisa  loved  the  king, 
Blackwood's  Magazine y  1869  ;  Middlemarch,  187 1 ;  The 
Legend  of  Jubal y  1874  ;  Daniel  Deronday  1876  ;  The  Im- 


The  Development  ot  Personality      301 

pressions  of  Theophrastus  Such,  1879  ;  and  said  to  have 
left  a  translation  of  Spinoza's  Ethics,  not  yet  published. 

As  the  mind  runs  along  these  brief  phrases  in  which 
I  have  with  a  purposed  brevity  endeavored  to  flash  the 
whole  woman  before  you,  and  as  you  supplement  that 
view  with  this  rapid  summary  of  her  literary  product, — 
the  details  of  fact  seem  to  bring  out  the  extraordinary 
nature  of  this  woman's  endowment  in  such  a  way  that 
to  add  any  general  eulogium  would  be  necessarily  to 
weaken  the  picture.  There  is  but  one  fact  remaining  so 
strong  and  high  as  not  to  be  liable  to  this  objection, 
which  seems  to  me  so  characteristic  that  I  cannot  do 
better  than  close  this  study  with  it.  During  all  her  later 
life  the  central  and  organic  idea  which  gave  unity  to  her 
existence  was  a  burning  love  for  her  fellow-men.  I  have 
somewhere  seen  that  in  conversation  she  once  said  to  a 
friend  :  **  What  I  look  to  is  a  time  when  the  impulse  to 
help  our  fellows  shall  be  as  immediate  and  as  irresistible 
as  that  which  I  feel  to  grasp  something  firm  if  I  am  fall- 
ing ; "  and  the  narrator  of  this  speech  adds  that  at  the  end 
of  it  she  grasped  the  mantel-piece  as  if  actually  saving 
herself  from  a  fall,  with  an  intensity  which  made  the 
gesture  most  eloquent. 

You  will  observe  that  of  the  two  commandments  in 
which  the  Master  summed  up  all  duty  and  happiness,  — 
namely,  to  love  the  Lord  with  all  our  heart,  soul  and  mind 
and  to  love  our  neighbor  as  ourself,  George  Eliot's  whole 
life  and  work  were  devoted  to  the  exposition  of  the  latter. 
She  has  been  blamed  for  devoting  so  litde  attention  to  the 
former ;  as  for  me,  I  am  too  heartily  grateful  for  the  stim- 
ulus of  human  love  which  radiates  from  all  her  works  to 
feel  any  sense  of  lack  or  regret.  This,  after  all — the 
general  stimulus  along  the  line  of  one's  whole  nature  — 
is  the  only  true  benefit  of  contact  with  the  great.     More 


302  The  English  Novel 

than  this  is  hurtful.  Nowadays,  you  do  not  want  an 
author  to  tell  you  how  many  times  a  day  to  pray,  to 
prescribe  how  many  inches  wide  shall  be  the  hem  of  your 
garment.  This  the  Master  never  did ;  too  well  He  knew 
the  growth  of  personality  which  would  settle  these  mat- 
ters, each  for  itself;  too  well  He  knew  the  subtle  hurt 
of  all  such  violations  of  modern  individualism ;  and  after 
our  many  glimpses  of  the  heartiness  with  which  George 
Eliot  recognized  the  fact  and  function  of  human  person- 
ality one  may  easily  expect  that  she  never  attempted  to 
teach  the  world  with  a  rule  and  square,  but  desired  only 
to  embody  in  living  forms  those  prodigious  generaliza- 
tions in  which  the  Master's  philosophy,  considered 
purely  as  a  philosophy,  surely  excelled  all  other  systems. 
In  fine,  if  I  try  to  sum  up  the  whole  work  of  this 
great  and  beautiful  spirit  which  has  just  left  us,  in  the 
light  of  all  the  various  views  I  have  presented  in  these 
lectures,  where  we  have  been  tracing  the  growth  of 
human  personality  from  -^schylus,  through  Plato, 
Socrates,  the  contemporary  Greek  mind, —  through  the 
Renaissance,  Shakspere,  Richardson  and  Fielding, 
down  to  Dickens  and  our  author;  I  find  all  the 
numerous  threads  of  thought  which  have  been  put  before 
you  gathered  into  one,  if  I  say  that  George  Ehot  shows 
man  what  he  may  be,  in  terms  of  what  he  is. 


14  DAY  USE 

RBTUKN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  Ust  date  stamped  below,  oi 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

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